Driving in my truck yesterday, I happened to notice the odometer was getting close to 150,000 miles. My 1996 Toyota T100 has given me nearly flawless service since I bought it more than 10 years ago. Just recently I had the first expensive maintenance in its entire lifetime, and I expect that to be the last for at least another 50,000 or so miles.
But I got to pondering another significance of that 150,000 miles. All but a very few miles of that were driven by me – so that 150,000 miles represents a whole bunch of my personal time. If you figure I averaged 50 MPH over they entire life of the truck (that's optimistic), that means I have spent something like 3,000 hours driving my truck. And that doesn't even count the time I spent driving our other vehicle!
Three thousand hours on the road. I know where most of this came from: until five years ago, I had a job that required me to commute to the office every day. Until two years ago, I traveled to the office once a week. The past two years I've worked from my home, with no commute at all.
Back in the bad old days when I was a manager, we used to figure that a normal employee worked 2,000 hours per year (50 weeks at 40 hours per week). So that 3,000 hours is equivalent to a year and a half of employment. If you figure in the fact that the vast majority of my commute time in this truck happened over just six years of employment (when I was commuting every day), a year and a half of wasted time starts to be significant.
The bottom line is that both I and my employer are gaining from the absence of my commute. I'm a salaried employee and don't formally keep track of my hours – but I guarantee you they exceed 40 hours per week (ask my wife!). I gain personally as well – no more frustrating rush hour commutes, and some more free time to spend with my family, on my hobbies, or on my honey-do list (I'll let you guess where the priorities are <smile>).
I love it that my Toyota shrugs off the 150,000 miles … but I hate it that I had to waste all that time driving to find that out!
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