There is a lot of worry about fuel economy these days and not enough understanding of how the bigger vehicles fit into the picture. While a Toyota Prius does get much better gas mileage than a GMC dump truck, try hauling rocks with the Prius and see many trips it has to make to haul as much as the dump truck can haul in one trip.

Relative Mileage

Relative gas mileage takes into account the load being hauled, and not just the raw miles per gallon. While it may seem obvious that big trucks use more fuel, most people would be surprised at how much more efficient trucks are than cars when it comes to doing what they do best, hauling cargo.

An example of this would be a dump truck that gets five miles per gallon compared to a Prius that gets fifty miles per gallon. For this example it will be assumed that both vehicles run on the same grade of regular gasoline.