Fuel Economy for newspaper route

I just purchased a 2004 Prius that I'm using for a newspaper route. I just started this route about a month ago and knew immeditily that I would need to get a more fuel efficent car. We have 2 cars. 2013 Dodge Avenger and 2005 Buick Lacrosse. Both these cars are low milage. The dodge was getting about 17mpg on my route and the Buick was getting about 15mpg. I wanted to get a car for the route to keep the miles on our primary cars from going up so fast. I wanted to get a car that would save some money and not eat into my profits from the paper route so much.

My first thought was to get a small gas only car like a civic or corolla. But then I did some research on the prius. I wasn't sure how good it would be on my route because of lots of stoping and accelerating but I knew it would be better than my current mgp. I bought my prius yesterday and used it on my route lastnight, driving it the same way I normally do. My hopes was to average 40mpg. I'm happy to report that I averaged 41.5 mpg.

My paper route brings in $1650 a month. I was spending approx $450/mo on gas (for the route alone, not counting any other driving). I should now be spending approx $150/mo on gas for the route. So I should save about $300/mo in gas. I got a no intrest loan for the purchase. My payment is $220/mo for 30 months. So my gas savings more than pays my car payment.

Also, from what I learned through my research of the prius, my breaks should last much longer. I haven't even caculated those savings.

So I do belive I made a good choice. I posted this so that if there is anyone else considering a prius for a newspaper route and are doing the research on it as I did then maybe this will help.

 

Yeah, I am aware of that and it was a consideration when deciding to make the purchase. This car has high milage but it was very well take care of, great maintance records.

 

Yeah, I'm happy with 41.5,.. i'm sure that it will not always be the same. Some nights I have more stops than others, weekends and especially Saturday night is more stops

 

176,000 ,.. my route is 65mi every night

 

Saturday nights is the only night I'll have to reload the car. Lastnight was the first night i've ran the paper route with the prius. It was 136 papers. I have 114 papers Sun-Tue nights, 136 papers Wed-Fri nights, and 156 on Sat night. Other than Saturday night the papers are fairly thin, even with inserts. Saturday nights (Sunday Paper) is pretty big with the inserts and all the ads. My house is right in the middle of the route. So on Sat nights I'll probably take the buick and bring the bundles back to my house, put them together, then load the stops for the first half of the route into the prius. I'll stop by the house half way through my route and pick up the rest of the papers. Thats my plan for now, I think it will work.

 

Ok, here is an update. Saturday night I had 156 papers. I loaded about half of them in the prius, delivered those, then stopped by the house and loaded the rest. It took me 2 1/2 hrs. My mpg average was 38mpg.

Lastnight, (sun night) I had 117 papers. It took me 2 hrs and 10 mins to deliver. My average mpg was 44.1 mpg.

 

No, doing it on foot isn't an option. I don't have very many houses that are right next to each other. I'm very happy with the mpg that I'm getting with the prius. Its really going to save me a lot of money.

 

That is exactly what I did, borrowed from my mother, no intrests. ... I do a lot of coasting and gentle acceleration. My goal was to get 40 mpg on the route. So far I've been above that every night. I'm very happy.

 

Lastnight 46.2mpg. This was my best so far. But this time I was paying more attention to my driving style, (coasting, light accelerating), trying to get the best mpg I could. Also, I fueled up right before I started, not sure if that made a difference.

 

P&G? hmmm, not sure exactly what that is