Heavy Trucks Move Freight Efficiently

Though discussions of vehicle efficiency are often centered on a measurement of miles per gallon, it is also important to consider how efficiently a vehicle carries its payload. Although heavy vehicles like buses or class 8 trucks get much fewer miles per gallon than cars, a greater percentage of their mass is payload which means that they are much more efficient at carrying weight whether passengers or cargo. The figure below shows that as the size and mass of a vehicle increases, so does its' efficiency in moving freight. When fuel efficiency is measured in gallons of fuel per thousand ton miles, a car consumes 69 gallons of fuel while a school bus consumes about 20 gallons and a class 8 truck consumes just six and a half gallons.