That's what I'm going to be doing this year - calculating HOURS per gallon instead of Miles. Just gives a more accurate measure of fuel used for plowing, especially driveways. My truck has an hour meter which can be switched instead of the miles on the speedometer. Otherwise, I think the most accurate way would be to start and end your route with a full tank and time it. You'd have to deduct for time spent drinking coffee etc.
I live in Wasilla Alaska and am currently running two dodges with boss plows. I have only plowed one time this year so far but I wanted to find out what it took in fuel. Each truck has 25 accounts that they handle right now so what I did was filled them up before they left then refilled them when they returned. Each route take's about 4 hrs to complete. That gave me a fairly good idea of what I am useing per truck. Since all of my accounts are paid in full and are for the entire season its simple math to figure out what they are costing me to run. Of course insurance and maintenace also have to be figured in but so far the way I have been doing it has worked well. As for estimateing it is done on a job basis and I basically base them on what I was charged to do my drive which is 300 feet long. Of course that was 8 years ago and I have increased cost about 5% per year and have not lost a contract yet. I am in my seventh year now and am currently adding a third truck.
Had to look up the reciepts and look at the trip logs.
1996 Dodge 5.9 with 7' 6" Boss plow 4 hrs 10 minutes 7.59 Gal = @1.89 GPH
2004 Dodge Hemi 7' 6" Boss Plow 3hrs 55 minutes 9.35 Gal = @ 2.33 GPH
I rounded both off to the 4 hrs to make it easy. Also remember that both of these truck are well maintained and the clents are fairly close together. Each has one acct that is outside their normal areas so some of this is just highway travel. On the upside when I looked at last winter and took out a gas reciept and a trip ticket from the same day the numbers were very close to what these were.
My quad burns .75 gallons per hour.
F-250 had a hole in the tank last year and the speed-o doesn't work in reverse so I don't know mpg. Somewhere around 3 mpg.
Sorry, I don't think that helped you too much.
The respones about fill up, plow, fill up. Do the math on the time and gallons and you will have an answer is the best way.
I too think when it comes to plowing GPH rather that MPG is more effective way to measure cost.
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