The van crossed 193,000 on Tuesday afternoon in the middle school pickup line, which is about where I expected it to happen. Tina sent me a picture of the odometer with no caption. After 19 years of marriage, I know what that means: you said you'd track this, so track it.
So I did. Every trip in the Sienna in July went into the spiral notebook, and I've kept going through the first 13 days of August. I wanted a number for what the school year does to a family van, not a feeling.
July against August
July was summer at its quietest. The Sienna went 1,050 miles. That's church on Sundays, groceries, Lainey to a couple of volleyball open gyms, Tina to the flower shop downtown and back, and Garrett's mowing route, which means the push mower riding in the back with the seats folded and Garrett behind the wheel on his permit with his mom in the passenger seat.
August is a different animal. In the first 13 days the van went 597 miles. If that pace holds, and the calendar says it will, August finishes at about 1,420 miles. That's 370 more than July, a 35 percent jump, without anybody taking a trip.
Here's where the extra comes from:
- Two schools, two different start times. Garrett is a junior at the high school and Lainey starts eighth grade, and the buildings aren't on the same side of town.
- Volleyball. Lainey's practices run three nights a week, and the gym isn't close to anything else we do.
- Back-to-school errands. Shoes, supplies, a physical, a second trip for the supplies we forgot.
- Mowing. The route doesn't stop just because school starts, and the grass doesn't care.
- Permit hours. Garrett needs 40 supervised hours with 10 at night, and some of those miles are just him driving his mom around the long way.
What the extra miles cost
The Sienna is a 2011 with the 3.5-liter V6. It does about 22 on the highway, but school miles are short trips, cold starts and pickup lines, so it's averaging 17.5 in my August entries. Regular has been running about $2.92 in town.
370 extra miles at 17.5 mpg is about 21 gallons. At $2.92, that's $62 a month in gas.
Gas isn't the whole bill, though. Every mile wears on brakes, tires and oil. On this van I figure about five cents a mile for that, using what we've actually spent: front pads and rotors this April, a set of tires every 50,000 or so, oil every 5,000. Another 370 miles is roughly $18 of wear.
So the school year adds about $80 a month to the van. Over a nine-month school year that's around $720. It's not a crisis. But it's not nothing, either, and it explains why our budget always feels tighter in September than in June even though nothing big happened.
It also means more miles on a van with 193,000 on it. At this rate it'll see 200,000 sometime next spring. Lainey has already said there will be a cake. I didn't argue.
What we're changing, and what we're not
Some of this is just the cost of having two kids in activities. I'm not going to tell Lainey she can't play volleyball to save $25 a month in gas. But a few things are worth trying:
First, we're stacking errands. If Tina is already across town at practice pickup, the grocery run happens then, not on its own trip the next day. Second, Garrett's permit hours get pointed at trips we'd make anyway. He drives to church and to the store, not around Krug Park three extra times. Third, a volleyball carpool with one other family for the far gym, which on paper takes about 60 miles a month off the van.
What we're not changing is the van. It's paid for, it's comfortable, and the AC compressor we put in it in June cost $1,140, so I'd like to get my money's worth. We'll run it till it tells us otherwise.
I'll keep logging every trip through September and post the final number. My guess is that August will be the worst month of the year for the van, partly because of the start-of-school rush and partly because July made it look so good. If I'm wrong, the notebook will tell me, and Tina will send another picture with no caption.