"At the time, diesel fuel prices in their home state of Colorado were averaging around $3 per gallon... [They] gutted their bus, which they’ve dubbed the G Wagon, created a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, and installed plumbing and solar power. They also mapped out an ambitious yearlong, cross-country trip.... They got on the road this March, only to realize quickly that gas prices were not what they’d expected. 'We drove to Florida basically all in one weekend.... We were estimating it to cost about $200 [to fill the 60-gallon tank] and lately it’s been about $300.' With... 8 to 10 miles per gallon... [the] first trip cost them nearly $2,000 on gas alone."
ADDED: At the comments over there:
I vacillate between "good for them for following their dream" and "what did you think was going to happen?" It is a special kind of privilege to glorify and actively purse a lifestyle that is for many a last resort before becoming homeless.
And the terse taunt:
...in a vaaaaan down by the river!
AND: The NYT does arithmetic: "With a 60-gallon tank, and fuel mileage of about 8 to 10 miles per gallon, the G Wagon needed gas every four hours."
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Let's assume: (a) they get 10 miles per gallon; (b) gas is up $2 per gallon (20 cents per mile); and (c) they planned to travel 5,000 miles cross country over a year. The increased cost is $1,0000 or $20 per week. They probably spent ten to twenty times that already on the bus conversion. This is yet another article written by someone incapable of doing any type of math.
Price rations a shortage to the most efficient uses. So it's doing what it's supposed to do, presumably getting these guys to postpone their adventure in favor of commercial trucking uses of diesel today.
I am amazed at how much some are willing to spend on mobile housing that eventually will breakdown.
Let me guess, these folks are not saving for the future or building any kind of useful equity in anything.
I am sure we will hear from them in a decade about how unfair the system is, after blowing serious coin on a fancy bus and free living lifestyle.
"Price rations a shortage to the most efficient uses. So it's doing what it's supposed to do, presumably getting these guys to postpone their adventure in favor of commercial trucking uses of diesel today."
Yes. But there doesn't need to be a shortage. This is entirely on the policy of the current Administration.
This is good. Even the most hardcore Greens are beginning to realize that we need reasonable oil and natgas.
Power blackouts in Sydney, Australia but in Western Australia they are going to close all of their coal-fired power plant.
Do not crucify America on a cross of wind turbine blades!
Probably still cheaper than living in a house...
It's a good thing their diesel is older engine. Newer diesel engines require the injection of DEF (diesel exhaust fluid), which is now in short supply.
I’m heavy into oil and natgas stocks thanks to Biden.
People are beginning to realize that CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world. The only beneficiaries are Wall Street, coastal elites and China.
Those NYTsies are fast! 60 gallons of gas x 9 mpg = 540 miles. NYTsies figure on tank nets four hours of driving time.
Those Manhattan gonzo journos must be used to driving 155 mph.
They should have retrofit it to be all electric and they wouldn’t have to worry about gas/diesel prices. Solar panels on the roof and all that. Missed opportunity….
One of my wife's nieces and her husband bought an old bus several years ago and have started to renovate it. I should ask her to ask them how it's going.
A friend of ours, a few years older, has been living in an RV since he retired probably ten years ago. A seasonal migrant.
Am I getting my math wrong or was NYT?
60 gallons, 8 mi/gallon = 480 miles. 60 miles per hour = 8 hours of driving per tank. Not 4 hours.
Hari's math is good. $20 a week if they drive 5,000 miles a year. If we make it 15,000 miles a year, It's $60 a week, $250 a month $3,000 a year, so maybe they camp longer at east destination.
Agree with David Begley: the climate hoax is biggest and most destructive ever.
What Kai and Wa St Blogger said. More like a new tank every 8-9 hours. If it is in fact every 4 hours, then their average MPG was more like 3-4, which seems unlikely if it was mostly highway driving.
A simple way to tell a moron from a lunatic: A moron probably can't apply middle school algebra to a real-life problem, but he can realize the improbability of his answer. The likelihood of error never occurs to the lunatic. (Hattip to Umberto Ecco.)
I have a nephew getting married in Montana this summer. I live a couple thousand miles away and was looking at different ways of attending. This is the first time for my family of 3 that flying is cheaper than driving. This includes hotel and food for a 3-day drive, but the big difference-maker is gas.
I've always been suspicious of the many "van life" channels on YouTube... Life on the road is hard. Ask any non-rich touring musician. It's a grind.
I'm a part time van lifer. Have been since the 1960's when I went on my first Surfin' Surfari. Westfalia Kombis were the call back in the day but truth be told any old van would do. As I age into my 70's a Ford Transit 250 heavily tricked out - but NOT rv'd - to rock up to a beach in Baja, Mexico or the Outer Banks, and paddle out for a dawn patrol session. I get 16mpg+ so it's still a financially doable deal for this Oldster. Camp all week and hotel it on the weekends in some cool little town or city. It's a grand life - on Surfari to stay. Until we get sick of the road - 30 days max - and go home to creature comforts.
They should have expected it after Biden was installed. He said in the debate that he was going to “ Joe Biden in 2020: "No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill period. It ends."
He told us a year ago he was going to destroy the oil industry. And he is doing it.
They should have expected it after Biden was installed. He said in the debate that he was going to “ Joe Biden in 2020: "No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill period. It ends."
He told us a year ago he was going to destroy the oil industry. And he is doing it.
Biden is tilting at oil rigs, having been egged on by the windmills. Like Quixote, he is delusional, paranoid, egotistical and divorced from reality.
I have a cousin who married a guy who lived in a converted school bus back in the 90's. I used to pile on with everyone else in the family making fun of the hippies. I had no idea the guy kept it until right before Covid I saw on social media he had had it towed out to an amazing bit of lakeside property where they are going to use it as a retirement and vacation home.
Now I wish I had bought a school bus.
Anyway. Someone needs to tell these people that it's going to be OK.
Biden doesn’t seem to understand that oil is a worldwide commodity with the price set by the market. If the oil companies actually set the price, during the pandemic when prices were negative don’t you think the oil guys would have set the prices at, say, $100 a barrel? Now Biden wants to issue an executive order to address the price issues. This is yet another admission that production matters! Maybe he should reauthorize Keystone and stop slow walking or denying permits to drill. Also, with prices at record levels, what oil executive would be withholding production?
Biden’s pledge to end our use of fossil fuels is coming home to roost. For all the greenies that want a carbon tax to fight global warming, well…….you’ve got it! This is exactly what the climate change advocates have wanted. How do you like it now? Not much fun is it?
There's about 50-55 years of proven reserves in the world. It's all going to be drilled eventually.
Bus saves on real estate taxes.
I'm not surprised the NYT can't do math! Most of those guys were all journalism or liberal arts majors, very little engineering, math or science. And it shows!
Unfortunately, even the people who are planning Joe Biden's incredible green transition are equally math-challenged. They think all they have to do is declare what's needed, technologically, and those other geeky guys will just make sure it's all delivered on time.
In NY's own "green-new-deal" plan, they refer to "dispatchable emissions-free resources" that are needed to deal with wind and solar being unavailable so much of the time. But what is this magic thing? Well, it could be nuclear, except they're shutting that down. Batteries? For storage that will have to last months, so that summer surplus production can take care of the dark winter doldrums? Batteries don't do that, just short-term storage. At enormous cost. But hey, we need it, so just deliver it! We can figure it out as we go along. People are going to die in the cold with this reckless abandoning of common sense. And those who survive will be impoverished.
There is a lot on this topic at Manhattan Contrarian , a blog one of my law-school classmates runs. Worth a read.
Don't worry. The Biden administration is on the case and here to help you. Diesel fuel too expensive right now? No sweat. Soon you won't be able to get it at all for your personal van. Or any truck.
Diesel Exhaust Fluid shortage. Another self-induced mistake.
Hello, we're from your government and we're here to help.
I had good friends that lived for 15 years in a 60 foot Winnebago. They delivered Winnebagos for 3 years before they bought one.When they hit 80 the sold it, and bought a townhouse. Coincidence, Bluebird school buses were built in Mt Pleasant IA, until they moved the plant to Mexico in the 90's and Winnebago of course, or still built in Forrest City IA.
I see nothing wrong with living on the road. Not for me, but the world needs all kinds.
readering said...
"Bus saves on real estate taxes."
Motor vehicle licensure, plus the increased cost of liability insurance and (if you're prudent, an umbrella policy to cover excess ad damnum), makes up a lot of the difference in cost.
Will wrote: I've always been suspicious of the many "van life" channels on YouTube... Life on the road is hard. Ask any non-rich touring musician. It's a grind.
I did come across one woman who did a final video after she quit the van life. Can't find it, but there's a number of them on YouTube.
What I remember, it was like any other experience. Great at times, but it's wearing to continually write and publish videos, there are freezing cold days, bad weather that makes it hard to film, and loneliness.
'There's about 50-55 years of proven reserves in the world. It's all going to be drilled eventually.'
"In 1999, the American Petroleum Institute estimated that we'd run out of oil between 2062 and 2094; however, in 2006, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates estimated that we actually had three times the amount of oil on Earth than was believed in 1999..." -- Greenmatters.com
This is from a lefty site.
I believe that we'll never 'run out' of oil because at some point we will develop tech that will enable us to just leave it in the ground.
There's about 50-55 years of proven reserves in the world. It's all going to be drilled eventually
Yea. Peak oil. They were talking about that back in the 70's, so it has to be true. That was the same time an expert wrote a book about how we had too many people on the planet, and it would soon be physically impossible to feed them all. 1980 the population was 4.5B now its 7.8B and people are still eating. If we don't starve under Biden.
The peak oil predictions were based on easily extracted liquid flowing petroleum and were very very accurately predicted by Shell Oil geologist M King Hubbert. Geologists have known for a very very long time about the abundance of shale oil in the US.
'The peak oil predictions were based on easily extracted liquid flowing petroleum and were very very accurately predicted by Shell Oil geologist M King Hubbert. Geologists have known for a very very long time about the abundance of shale oil in the US.'
Get your definitions right...Peak Oil has nothing to do with the quantity of oil in the ground...
"Peak oil is the moment at which extraction of petroleum reaches a rate greater than that at any time in the past and starts to permanently decrease."
Bluebird school buses were built in Ft Valley, GA.
Peak oil, whatever the term meant to geologists, was short hand for the enviro wackos, to scare the masses that Oil was on track to fail to fill the worlds energy needs in this lifetime.
When those predictions were made, vast new oil reserves had yet to be discovered, and ignored the march of technology to more efficiently mine for more oil. A static equation that had no place for variables.
Much like food production was assumed to have reached a plateau. Reminds me of Congress? saying there was no more need for the patent office, because everything had already been invented.
Micheal, there were more that one plant, for sure.
It is a special kind of privilege to glorify and actively purse a lifestyle that is for many a last resort before becoming homeless.
What is it with leftists thinking they have the right to tell - or shame - other people on how to live their lives or spend their own money?
Let me guess, these folks are not saving for the future or building any kind of useful equity in anything.
Why is it any of your business what they do?
Because it becomes our business when those of us who prudently plan for the future get stuck as taxpayers with bailing out the improvident who can’t afford to pay their own way any longer. The provident get tired of being chumps.
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters
Beat legend Neal Cassady was at the wheel on their maiden voyage from La Honda, California to New York. They left on June 17, 1964, but because of various vehicle problems, it took them 24 hours to go the first 40 miles (64 km). George Walker recalls, "We left La Honda on June 14, 1964, about 3pm First stop, on Kesey's bridge, out of gas! Made it about 100 feet."
Furthur (bus)
"They got on the road this March, only to realize quickly that gas prices were not what they’d expected"
I'm not who the morons are, these two guys or the NYT writer and his editor.
I'm not who the morons are, these two guys or the NYT writer and his editor.
In this scenario always take the NYT and give the points. It's quite possible they even mis-characterized the subjects of the article to make their point. Gell-Mann and all that.
@Creola Soul
Also, with prices at record levels, what oil executive would be withholding production?
You've got it backwards. Which oil executives are willing to withhold production in order to drive prices up? And that would be OPEC.
The idea from lefties that we are going to “run out” of anything is just more of their typical political posturing.
I loved how they used to say “don’t drill anwar it will take 10 years”. They have kept saying it for 40 years now.
They want to destroy the oil industry. Biden said so directly in a debate and we installed the cabbage into office. We are getting exactly what he said he would give us good and hard
Always the wrong question. It costs MONEY to pump oil. It’s not lying around like I’m Saudi Arabia. But Biden and the democrats have told the oil industry that if you try to start new drilling sites, you will not get permits, or they will be revoked at the last minute, whatever the **** the mafia wants to do.
Any business investing in new oil sources is an idiot.
It is a special kind of privilege to glorify and actively purse a lifestyle that is for many a last resort before becoming homeless.
Gee, the Sixties are really over.
I never thought I'd say it, but I kind of miss them.
How fares the Deep Origin Theory of oil development nowadays?
I'll check the Intertub and report back what I find--and discover some expert commentary here when I return in a few hours.
One of the earliest "running out of oil" articles I have seen was published in Fortune about 1944. The fear was that we wouldn't have enough fuel to finish off Hitler. The supply and demand charts will scare you to death. Wait ten years and repeat. Makes for awesome fear mongering.
The Abiogenic Deep Origin Theory still has proponents.
Please understand that:
"England will run out of wood in 1500."
"England will run out of Coal in 1890."
"US will run out of Oil in 1980."
"World will run out of NG in 1990."
are all just pump and dump ways to fleece the sheep in markets.
John Kerry is a serial dope since the Vietnam War, where he supported Vietnam, and later Iran.
The iron law of minerals is that as easily exploited reserves are depleted, price will rise allowing less easily exploited reserves to be produced.
The earth is a ball of minerals, humans will not deplete that wonderful ball, how could they.
Do you know what kept England free in 1940? Coal.
Old men digging coal to produce the weapons needed to fight.
As Heinlein foretold, at a certain point it will be cheaper for families to ply the asteroid belt mining gold, silver, and iron in the new mining stampede.
Proven reserves are based on feasible to extract at the current price, recoverable oil in the ground, the US has the most, more than Russia and more than the Saudis. We will be using something else before we come close to using it all. The stone age ended and there are still plenty of stones.
Today, you can buy a 71 passenger 2006 Bluebird for $5,200 with 110,000 on the odometer.Contact Midwest Transit Equipment in Kankakee. Average cost to convert to an RV would run in the neighborhood of 30 Grand - but if you have a large garage, own the right tools, are handy at building things, have all the time in the world to do the work, and can get by in simple living space - you might get by with $10 Grand or so in materials.
Or you can buy a luxurious 2005 Holiday Rambler Imperial 42PBQ Class A RV with everything already onboard and low mileage for $123,500. Custom interior with fireplace, pop-up TV, and wall hugger recliners, Double entrance step, newer house batteries, Built-in tow brake controller, All new fabric on power awnings and slide out toppers, new satellite dish, 2 TVs, sound bar, washer/dryer combo, Power cord reel, auto leveling with 10 new airbags, tag axle, queen bed, new steer tires, slide-out 10,000KW quiet generator, 3 A/C’s, Aqua-Hot, Cummins 400 with no DEF, only 93,000 miles. Comes with two-year old 14’ trailer painted to match, 5900GVW axles, power winch, power hitch, power step, rear ramp. Pick it up in Mishawaka.
Either way, don't bitch about diesel fuel. Buses are really hard on MPG.
A couple of decades ago, I bought a bus at a school district auction for $200. There were only two of us bidding on it, and the other guy didn't really want it. The district replaced buses on a schedule, so it was in good shape and had just come out of service. This was before those type of auctions were centralized.
School buses are a great platform for conversion. Everything is really simple and sturdy. Almost anything you do makes it nicer than it was. I converted it and had it re-titled as an RV. The couple in the article did a really nice job, putting more time and money into it. Mine was more like living in a shed.
Perhaps because The Partridge Family wasn't such a distant memory, people really liked seeing the school bus RV.
tim in vermont said...
Proven reserves are based on feasible to extract at the current price, recoverable oil in the ground, the US has the most, more than Russia and more than the Saudis. We will be using something else before we come close to using it all. The stone age ended and there are still plenty of stones.
Great comment - love the part about plenty of stones. AAMOF, cosmic rays from the sun routinely produce cloud formations thus controlling global temperature by converting CO2 to precipitation which then settles down into our waters to make limestone. This concept was proven to be correct by experiments conducted by Dr Henrick Svensmark in Denmark and totally verified by sophisticated experiments conducted by CERN in Switzerland. So now we have even more stones to mine for the good of man.
"readering said...
Bus saves on real estate taxes."
We pay about $12k per year in property taxes. At 10 miles per gallon and $6/gal of diesel, we could drive 20,000 miles/year and break even.
There's been an asinine trend of repurposing inappropriate things as a form of recycling. This includes spending $$$$$$$$$ to convert old buses instead of buying used RVs. RVs are built from the ground up for living, and come pre-built with beds, kitchens, and bathrooms. Similarly, naïve people started living in corrugated shipping containers. They didn't think about the lack of insulation, their odd non-house shape, and the toxic residues left from shipping chemicals and whatnot. They didn't think about the dedicated pre-built modular homes (cousins to mobile homes) that are fare better suited for living than a metal box.
If you want it to look cool...add some decorations or a vinyl wrap to a standard RV or house... A little bit of research goes a long way.
Peak oil is a misnomer. You have peak 10$ a barrel recoverable oil...not a lot of that left, and those with it are making a fortune. Peak 40$ a barrel recoverable oil...still a lot left, including in the US if the Feds will get out of the way. Peak 60$ a barrel recoverable oil...Tons of this crap all over the Arctic and Carribean and Africa. 80$ a barrel recoverable oil....at this price, you can convert coal to oil have enough to last a few centuries. If you want cheap oil, open the spigots in the US. That will force the Saudis and Russia to open their spigots to keep their cash flowing. US production has an outsized influence, because OPEC watches for signs of short supply...and promptly cut their production in increase price even more.
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