Saving someone else’s gas

Well, I’ve just completed a transaction that is a big win-win-win. We’ll be loaning our second car to my brother in trade for my parents’ gas-guzzler he’s currently using. My brother works twelve-hour shifts over a 500 degree grill at a steakhouse, and in order to live someplace affordable, he has to drive about 15 miles each way to work. The beast he drives needs about 2.5 gallons of gas to make that round-trip, so Bro has to work about an hour to pay for his drive to work (once you figure in taxes). That’s just unfair, especially to someone who works his tail off like that.

We rarely need our second car, now that both of us work the same schedule (mostly) at the same university.
We do need it occasionally because there is no way to get into town when my husband works the noon-to-9pm shift Mondays during the school year and a few other times when we both need a vehicle. However, it’s kind of silly that the 30mpg car sits idle and the 12mpg car gets driven to work each day. And let me tell you, it will be a good reality check about whether we really need to take the truck into town when each trip will cost about $8. Yeeowch.

So let’s see: advantages include:

• My brother will save over $130 a month in gas
• 35 gallons of gasoline will not be burned each month
• 682 lb of CO2 will not produced each month (that’s almost 4 tonnes of carbon a year)
• We still have a second vehicle for times of extreme need, and access to the 30mpg car if needed
• We’ll probably drive the second car even less than we do now
• I now have something to haul mulch and firewood in

Taking our second car off the road would have been a good step…but taking *his* car off the road? Even better. And this really is low-hanging fruit; no one has to make drastic life changes to make this work. I’m really glad our family is able to work together to make this happen.