Sometimes, you just have to laugh. In the rush to become politically correct and green, some companies really don’t think their policies through very well.
Today as I was traveling back from Thanksgiving holiday I happened to notice a U-Haul vehicle trailer next to me in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Lo and behold in my face was a statement about reducing carbon emissions as you can see in the picture below. Look at the orange label on the inside fender, you may have to click the image to zoom in.
The label reads:
U-Haul Auto Transport – Reduces Carbon Emissions
So, rather than drive your car you should just tow it on this U-Haul trailer using another one.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
While it is technically a correct statement that two engines running would produce [MORE] carbon emissions than one, this is likely offset by the fact that most uses of the trailer are likely behind a larger U- Haul truck, fully loaded with belongings, while towing the car.
I really don’t think the math works but it might make some people feel good for thinking they are saving Gaia while moving.
Like most of the climate change moving, er movement, it is really all about the feelings, isn’t it?
The saddest part are the saps that think it works and is meaningful
Actually Mathew, the idea was to use only ONE driver for TWO vehicles, but then it got hijacked by the Green Machine !
Yes its a great idea for a single or a couple to move all their stuff and a vehicle in one go. The green embellishment is just BS
I wondered about that.
The real savings would be monetary, if a “drive-away” driver needn’t be paid to drive the car. Or if a friend or non-moving relative drives the car and needs to pay for a return flight.
GreenLogic™ is tricky. It traps you into thinking that it has anything to do with normal logic, which is based on reality. Case in point: “Reduces Carbon Emissions”. The assumption is that instead of real issues – a primary one being cost, but others being what is convenient, or comfortable, or even desireable, we have the faux issue of carbon emissions. Whether or not the use of such a trailer “reduces carbon emissions” is moot, to the point of the absurd. It matters not one iota, despite their pretense that it does. More to the point though, it is merely greenwashing on their part. They know there are greentards out there who will believe that it makes a difference. And that makes a difference to their bottom line.
Looking at the photo of the U-haul truck pulling a loaded trailer, I see a truck that is too small to carry the possessions of a family, or even just a couple. Perhaps a scenario where it is less carbon emitting to tow a car is one in which a single person has too much stuff to haul using his/her car, and the car isn’t capable of pulling a trailer. Hauling the car would, in that case, be less carbon emitting than making a round trip with the U-haul truck in order to go back to drive the car.
SR
or the car is a project not a runner
At constant speed on a level surface, most of the power train’s output is used to overcome aerodynamic drag. A negligible amount is used to overcome resistance in the drivetrain and tires. Two vehicles running independently must each overcome aerodynamic drag.
If one vehicle is pulled on a trailer behind the other, the total aerodynamic drag is smaller so total energy used is less. The faster you go (assuming the same speed in the two independent vehicle and single hookup cases), the greater the savings.
Think of drafting in NASCAR.
..”Drafting” in Nascar races ONLY works if you get within 1 foot of the car you are following…More than 1 foot and you are creating an aerodynamic mess…There are many video’s online that show this…
https://youtu.be/Gj0mBGYcjdM
Marcus. Drafting behind trucks in real life doesn’t require spacing of one foot or less. This from personal experience using a VW Microbus and various motorcycles.
In NASCAR closer is better but there is nothing magic about one foot notwithstanding “many video’s online”.
Yep.
When you gotta go … U-haul. ha ha
And look at the improvement in aerodynamic drag.
Has anyone actually worked the numbers? Having driven a U-Haul truck from San Diego to our farm towing our vehicle we saved the emissions in addition to the costs we would have created driving driving our vehicle. The mileage for the truck was the same with or without the load (checked the mileage dropping off the truck). The joke may be on you.
” The mileage for the truck was the same with or without the load”…LOL…Are you implying that an empty van gets the same mileage as a loaded van ?
Not sure if anyone has pointed this out, but that trailer isn’t hauling anything. So it’s just a fuel using anchor dragged at the back of a truck.
Wherever you tow a trailer, it surely has to be towed back, and yes I get the UHaul logistics thing of renting them out for the return journey if they can. But if not, they have to be hauled back empty otherwise, they might all end up on one coast and that would tip the country on its side.
Capsize us like Guam when all the Marines showed up!
Empirical Evidence.
I bought 6 vehicles in Boston. I transported (exported and imported) them all to Halifax NS Canada.
I drove some and I towed some on a car carrier (my own and a rented one from U-Haul.
I also simultaneously transported 5 tons of furnishings. It was Aug 2006.
I tried every configuration because I am cheap. I don’t care about CO2, but I do care about money.
I hauled one 3200lb Camry on a car carrier behind a loaded F250. 650 miles.
I hauled a Neon and a snowblower on a car carrier behind a fulled loaded UHaul Truck. (about 3200 lbs also).
Also, I have made the 650 mile trip about 150 times so I have comprehensive records about the fuel consumption rates in cars the F250 and the U Haul.
Results.
We had 2 drivers.
We moved 3 vehicles per trip, one way. (not including the U HAUL truck)
The cost of hauling the car behind the F250 = 0.3X the cost of the loaded truck. The loaded F250 costs 2X the cost of the loaded car for fuel. Therefore, the car cost about 60% of what the car would cost if I drove it. (It too was full of stuff)
The Cost of moving the loaded UHAUL truck and tow load was 4X the F250 = 8X the car. Chug chug chug chug chug ker chug. Unloaded, the UHaul cost 2X the F250, or 4X the car.
((I Had to make 2 trips)
So my experience yielded a small cost saving by hauling 4 vehicles except for one thing… UHAUL charges you to return the truck IF you don’t do a round trip so you end up paying to shuttle an empty truck 650 miles back to the origin….EMPTY!!
UHAUL MOVES a lot of EMPTY trucks around.
I bet that empty trailer in the picture was attached to an empty truck and UHAUL was shuttling it to somewhere.
Conclusion.
From an overall systems perspective, it is better to drive the vehicle than tow it, IF you aren’t charged a one-way fee. A one-way fee implies empty vehicles are being shuttled. Now, UHAUL would be lying about that would they?
So drive your vehicle.
..Oh come on…be fair…….NOTHING compares to the F250.,especially if you work in construction…
I assume Uhaul shuttles their empty trucks around behind even bigger trucks?
Trailers and car dollies get trailered around to major collection points(yards) and smaller vans/trucks would be moved by carhauler. They try to even out where vehicles and trailers get dropped off after rentals.
CO2 isn’t carbon.
Not if sodium bicarbonate isn’t also, I guess. Maybe, say CO2 is not pure carbon to be correct. The term “carbon” is now shorthand for CO2, somehow. I think it has more association in their spin with “the dreaded Coal”.
Truly Anthony, the messages plastered all over these rental units are meant to placate market expectations nationwide and give them an appeal to all urban minorities, who are the bulk of the business. The green slogans will disappear when the true agenda is apparent and debate on the real direction of climate has commenced.
The time is nigh for this Anthro-climate change to become “so yesterday.
Damn Dyslexia, I switched the words true and real.
Should be-
“…the real agenda is apparent and debate on the true direction of climate…”
Expensive energy makes everything so complicated. Cheap energy makes discussions like this pointless. With cheap energy what’s a few pennies more?
Eugene WR Gallun
..Wow, excellent point, but it is lost on Progressives/Socialists/liberals….
It’s a conundrum of sorts, Eugene. Complicated energy makes it expensive, expensive energy makes it complicated.
So fun to abuse the King’s English!
[too stupid to allow in print, off topic to boot -mod]
…Just an old saying here, left over from the revolutionary war period.
As to resemblances, it is uncanny as I travel to see people who look nearly identical to folks I know.
,,,Causes ponderance of genetic “makes and models”
That would be – The Queen’s English, we don’t have a King in the UK at the moment. 🙂
You do have a slightly better candidate for when She leaves the Throne. I did not approve of the choice to allow Charles to raise the boys after Diana’s death, I felt they should have been placed in the custody of the Royal Marine Academy until they reached majority. That said, they seem to have turned out OK.
..Dear Mod, please explain to me why my heritage is ” too stupid to allow in print” ?
[the method of saying it, not the content -mod]
“the method of saying it”..? Now I am really confused …..Maybe I need more coffee….
[maybe you need to stop writing inane off-topic comments here -mod]
..I am an oddball ( French American and Irish Canadian), living in London, Ontario, Canada (which at one time was under 3 MILES of ice). …I would really like Griff or Mosh or any of these other “Alarmists” to explain to me WHY some melting ice, far to the North, is a bad thing ? Logic, using the past as a “guide”, tells that me Humans have thrived when the weather was warm, but dwindled when it cooled…What am I missing ?
“What am I missing ?”
Brother Marcus, maybe you’re (we’re) missing that vital faith in authority and consensus, backed by a MSM education (indoctrination)?
Marcus: Forward from Pop to you
Please see enclosed: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/27/u-hauls-ridiculous-carbon-reduction-scheme/comment-page-1/#comment-2353820
🙂
The idea of saving fuel by towing your car on a trailer is basically flawed. How you lose by depends on the second vehicle format and what is function is.
The main issue is that the rolling (tyre) resistance will be greater because of the mass of the trailer. Aerodynamics may be better or worse with a towed combination depending on the shape of the towing vehicle.
It will cost more fuel to tow the trailer and the car, than than to drive the car on is own.
Then again, I met a large family gassing up in Arkansas that had rented a box truck and trailered their big van so they could stuff it full of items too. Mom drove their Camry with 4 kids and Dad took 2 in the truck. I think they saved over using a mover (your results may vary).
Well, it does use less gas than:
1. driving U-haul truck full of your goods to where you are moving to.
2. driving some vehicle back.
3. now driving you car to where you are moving to.
I assume you’re renting the truck because a trailer wouldn’t be big enough, or because your doesn’t have the horsepower to haul a trailer.
Or maybe it’s they who missing the purpose of Occam’s Razor, by seeking to promote the most complicated (and costly) Human response to such a vague and undefined level of threat.
[Oops, that was a reply to Marcus above.]
…. Only logical, by extension, that vehicles capable of towing a trailer should be towing trailers, so that they could tow cars for people in order to reduce emissions.
I’ll tow you for $.45/mi, you’ll save the planet, and I’ll be green!
Sorry guys this article and thread is useless and wasting energy.. Much to do about nothing. Thanks Canada for a great Grey Cup game and Booh to the Seattle Seahawks for losing to Tampa. See now that is relevant (LOL) And having used U-haul? Thanks, They a great and necessary company, without them a lot of people would have to pay for a moving company, no thanks!
Hi, Sybot,
I’m sorry you’re bummed out this evening. Since you spoke up on behalf of U-Haul, I’ll add my accolade. I’ve used U-Haul twice to move. What people are saying about having to return a truck back to the point of original pick up was not my experience. Both trips, I picked off a drop off location at my destination. There was no question of my taking the truck back! This was on the west coast of the U.S..
Very good service and experience (best when the truck was a Chevy (same route in reverse) — first one, a Ford, much more frightening to drive, esp. up and down the mountains).
I wish the thread had been as much fun for you, Sybot, as it has been for me. LAUGHTER IS A WORTHWHILE OCCUPATION, no matter what. Joy, laughter, love, and fun. Always worthwhile.
Take care,
Janice
(from the posted article (ahem) 🙂 )
I also use and like UHaul. Actually did a return to origin point rental, hauled a friend’s household goods and a dog to FLA, then loaded up another friend’s mother’s antique purchases and stopped in Valdosta and picked up 400lbs of onions. Made money on that trip and had a good time in Tampa during the 3 day layover. Ain’t America great!!!!!!
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” – GK Chesterton ILN, 4/19/24
And another thought from Chesterton:
“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” – Chapter 2, Heretics, 1905
No, the trailer saves time and expense, which is why people used the service. It is a decision based on rationality by the person who rented the safe steel trailer, and by the company that offered it.
Welcome back from holiday–hope it was a very nice time.
Energy required (fuel used) is proportional to the mass, the distance traveled, and the friction loss to road and air drag from turbulence.
The mass (of the car) is the same here, the distance traveled is obviously the same, road friction is approximately the same (assuming properly inflated tires on the trailer). But I would make a small bet that a wind tunnel would show much higher turbulence around the towed car than a free traveling car. Ergo, more fuel consumed to move the car from point A to point B. Although I would also make a small bet that it would be hardly noticeable for any one trip, and completely negligible (relative to national fuel consumption) even in aggregate for all of the moves made in the US over a year.
Now, if they put an aerodynamic fairing extending from the back of the truck over the trailer – they might have a valid claim. Japan Railways saves a big chunk of money every year by proper attention to the aerodynamics of their bullet trains.
What about the pumping loss of spinning 2 engines instead of 1?
What’s people’s experience with towing a car trailer? Does it double fuel consumption?
I have no doubt that the trailer represents the more efficient solution (especially behind a diesel truck) compared to driving the truck, then flying back and then driving your car after it. Saves time too.
The car follows 2m behind the boxy truck – its incremental air resistance is minimal (and may even be a net positive). Yes, there’s drag – especially uphill. Not quite as efficient if you’re loading up a big V8 petrol engine but for diesel I think this is a no brainer.
Conventional journalism would have asked Uhaul for a statement on this and also done the math on any savings.
I have pointed out this article to Uhaul to give them a chance to comment.
Conventional journalism would have…..
That’s nice. So?
Mixed up, Griff? This is a blog.
“I have pointed out this article to Uhaul to give them a chance to comment”
That’s very nice of you Griff and while you’re about it could you ask them for an estimate of how much CO2 was expended in the manufacture and affixing of all those ‘virtue signalling’ signs on their vehicles as well as the extra CO2 emitted to cart their extra mass all round the countryside for the miles they do until due for replacement? Naturally we’d prefer conventional science to conventional journalism for that.
Quick gallons per mile calculation;
15ft U-Haul: 10 mpg or 0.1 gpm (from Uhaul website)
Generic Car: 20 mpg or 0.05 gpm (easy calculation baseline)
If towing drops the gpm by 0.05 gpm (drops to 6.7 mpg which is feasible depending on conditions) then towing is even with driving. I am sure there are easily instances where you can run the numbers and get results on both sides of what I have presented. Short answer; U-Haul is correct and Anthony is correct.
Stretching to make an issue out of this one.