Hit 10,000 miles on my pickup last week and it got me thinking about my carbon footprint

I never paid much attention to the odometer before, but seeing that round number while hauling fence posts made me realize how much diesel I've burned just driving to jobs over the last 7 months. Has anyone else had a random number or milestone make them stop and feel the weight of their daily impact?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_gonzalez1mo ago

Yeah but 10,000 miles on a diesel pickup is actually not that bad for carbon if you think about it. Diesels get way better mileage than gas trucks when you're hauling stuff, so you're burning less fuel per mile than if you had a big V8. I looked into this when I was feeling guilty about my own driving. The real kicker is that a lot of that carbon footprint stuff people talk about is more about the manufacturing of the vehicle and what you're hauling than the miles themselves. Like if you're using that truck for work and keeping an older vehicle on the road instead of buying a new one every few years, you might be doing better than someone in a Prius who trades it in every 3 years. Not saying diesel is clean or anything, just that the number on the odometer doesn't tell the whole story.

grays131mo ago

You're putting way too much thought into justifying a diesel truck.

bennett.evan1mo ago

Wait, 10,000 miles on a diesel pickup being "not that bad" is something I gotta wrap my head around. I've been sitting here thinking all this time that more miles equals more bad, so hearing that maybe it's not the whole picture is kind of throwing me for a loop, @patricia_gonzalez. That point about keeping an older vehicle on the road versus constantly buying new ones is something I never really considered, especially with how much material goes into making a new Prius every few years. I guess mileage numbers don't tell the whole story about what's actually going into the air...