[elhigh]

I've noticed that there isn't much discussion around how to get even better use out of the stretched fuel we burn. We talk about best routes, how to feel when the fuel injection drops into lean burn mode, tire pressure...but precious few ever mention making the car work twice as effectively by carrying another person.

One thing I've always done is try to make the best out of a bad situation. Can't help but burn up some dinosaurs, so I might as well move as much as I can while the stego goes up, right? So in one trip, drop the kids at college, drop the wife at her job, head on to work.

Obviously there can be complications: "Whaddaya mean you're puking orange? Orange, for real? Okay, I'll come get you." And depending on where you work this isn't generally an option. But my employer and my wife's employer are both very cool with unplanned vacancy, when things pop up, go deal with it. But we drive way fewer miles than we might otherwise because we're all sharing a ride.

Lately I've got one boy going to one school and the other to another...but the younger lad, now that the weather is cooled off a bit, insists on taking the truck to school because it gets better mileage. "And it's older than me. That, the manual and the cancerous paint give it a certain badass-like presence." Well, the kid's 19 after all.

So with three of us riding together, the older kid, the wife and myself, we're whistling up about 146 man-miles per gallon, which is bumping hard up against the loftier single-seat ultralight economobility pods being trundled out for consideration.

Really. This is the original and still most effective form of hypermiling. Why is it so unpopular?