How to Save Gas Money & Improve Your Commute

Car­pool­ing. Yes that is a ridicu­lously obvi­ous answer, but judg­ing by the amount of peo­ple I see dri­ving solo every day, it may be worth stat­ing the obvi­ous. Below I share my rea­sons for shar­ing the wheel.

The Mon­e­tary Argu­ment for Carpooling

Find­ing some­one you work with to split dri­ving duties is an easy way to save money on gas and improve your com­mute. I started car­pool­ing with my friend and co-worker Jason 2 weeks ago and have seen an imme­di­ate impact on my gas tank. We work in the same build­ing and live within 5 min­utes of each other, so it is fairly con­ve­nient for us to trade off rid­ing shot­gun. Now I have class one day a week, so we only car­pool the remain­ing 4 days. Still, that cuts nearly 150 miles a week out of my dri­ving, sav­ing me big time at the pump. Before car­pool­ing, I would fill up my car about once per week. At $3.00 per gal­lon that is about 36 bucks. Shav­ing off 2 days of com­mut­ing allows me to stretch my time between fill-ups to a full 2 weeks, sav­ing me over $70.00 per month. I cur­rently drive a 4 cylin­der Honda, and get pretty good gas mileage, but if you are an SUV dri­ver your sav­ings could eas­ily be well over 100 bucks per month. That does not include soft sav­ings of reduced wear and tear and mileage on your vehicle.

The Social / Polit­i­cal Argu­ment for Carpooling

Jason and I work together in the same part of the com­pany, but in much dif­fer­ent roles. That means that through­out the day we each accu­mu­late a good deal of knowl­edge, much of which can be shared. Car­pool­ing pro­vides us both with 30 min­utes of dis­cus­sion time at the begin­ning and end of every work day. This is great for vent­ing frus­tra­tions, gen­er­at­ing ideas, shar­ing news, and avoid­ing work­place pit­falls. Now, I would be lying if I stated that this time is always filled with talk of work. More often we dis­cuss sports, tele­vi­sion, fam­ily, music, or the world in gen­eral. Guys being guys. As some­one who is pretty busy, the time I get to spend just talk­ing with friends is lim­ited. Car­pool­ing has turned my com­mute from a soli­tary func­tional neces­sity into an enjoy­able social opportunity.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Argu­ment for Carpooling

Not a big moti­va­tor for me per­son­ally, but it feels good to know that I am reduc­ing my con­sump­tion of fos­sil fuel, and thus reduc­ing my impact on the envi­ron­ment. Fur­ther, it is one less car on a con­gested high­way. Imag­ine if there were 1/2 as many cars on the road on your way to work tomor­row. Would that improve your com­mute? It is nice to be able to do some­thing sim­ple that can improve my life and my world.

The Logis­tics of Carpooling

In the­ory, Jason and I could find 3 other peo­ple to car­pool along with us. Then I could prob­a­bly go a full month between fill-ups, increas­ing my sav­ings. How­ever, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that there are logis­ti­cal ele­ments to con­sider. Coor­di­nat­ing the sched­ules for 2 peo­ple is fairly sim­ple. We are either car­pool­ing or we aren’t. It is either my turn today or tomor­row. We leave for work at the same time and head home at the same time, and we live 5 min­utes away from each other. In short, it is con­ve­nient. Every per­son you add reduces con­ve­nience expo­nen­tially, so pro­ceed with cau­tion. Still, if you can pull it off, more power to you.

Sum­mary

As a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can, I value my inde­pen­dence. Dri­ving to work solo defi­nately pro­vides greater free­dom of move­ment, but at a cost. For me, at least with gas at $3.00 per gal­lon and ris­ing, the cost of car­pool­ing is far out­weighed by the benefits.

What would it take to get you to carpool?