I have a problem
It never fails.
Once finished, taking a firm grasp, I shake and shake and shake it ~ just as my father taught me years ago. Despite all of my best efforts, however, I never manage to keep the last drop from falling at my feet.
I am glad to discover I am apparently not the only inept person in the world. I watch.
I have seen plenty of other men ~ and women ~ struggle as well.
It is on my mind every time I am pumping gas:
"Will I be able to come up with some new maneuver that will allow me to win the game of preventing that last drop from hitting the ground?"
And, just how much gas and money is wasted every year by the needless loss of these lowly droplets?
Let's just say the average number of drops that fall to the ground per fill-up is "five." (While I can proudly state I never lose more than one or two, I am going by the stats collected by a much smarter and obsessive man than I.)
The volume per drop is roughly 0.05cc or 1.32086026 x 10-5 US gallons. In 2005, he contends there was an estimated 180,000 million gallons of gas pumped in the United States by the likes of you and me. After calculating a rough estimate of the volume of fuel lost to the ground, he went on to perform some admittedly "voodoo" mathematics so as to estimate the cost of these drops. He elected to use a $4 per gallon cost estimated during the fall of 2008, during the period of hyper-inflated prices (presumable in his area).
Regardless of the crude calculations or debatable methodology, his results seem impressive:
1,182,830.36 gallons of lost fuel in drops which fall to the concrete as we finish at the pumps, with an estimated collective cost of $4,731,321.45 per year.
As Labor Day approaches, as well as an all-too-predictable bump in "demand," we will all be party to yet another cycle of inflated fuel prices.
This gives me pause for reflection:
Surely, there is some innovative person out there who has already developed a ridiculously simple and inexpensive solution to this problem; "some clever piece of plastic" that would stave off the loss of these precious drops?
And I should also not be forced into the embarrassing position of appearing as though I am thrown into a fit of convulsions as I try to come up with new maneuvers to beat the drop at it's own game. I do own the drop, after all.
How could I possibly have known I had money "falling at my feet" every few days?
No less, at the pumps of my local gas station!
Go figure.
1 comment:
Let it sit for a second in the tank after it clicks off, tilt up to drain the gas in the handle then down so it stays in the spout as you remove it from the tank. 0 drips, I learned that after a couple years of driving an old car, gas will really screw up paint. Oh and in places where there isn't vapor recovery stand by the pump while it is running and watch the fumes pour out, way more lost fuel before they started installing the recovery systems in cities, even though they are technically stealing some of the gas you paid for as they suck off the fumes. I have no desire to figure those losses out, somebody did though as they decided to install them.
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