What would happen if every dollar had to justify itself?

The reason, not the punchline

Most writing about the cost of driving is done by people who are not paying for the car. A press fleet vehicle is lent. A cost per mile calculator does not have a bank balance. The difference between an interesting number and a number someone actually has to live with is the entire reason this site exists.

What follows is about the vehicles.

The fleet before this one

Four gas vehicles in about a year, one of them for just five days, each one bought for a job and sold when the job or the math changed.

modeled at $3.64 a gallon. The Sequoia lasted fifteen days, which is its own small lesson about buying under pressure.

Why used, and why the credit never applied

The car was bought used and financed from a franchise dealer in Franklin. The federal clean vehicle credit did not apply to this purchase, so none of the figures on this site assume it. Buying used also meant someone else absorbed the steepest part of the depreciation curve, which for this model is the largest single cost of ownership and is covered honestly on the Ledger.

Where the line is

Context is public, and so is income: The Record reports it day by day, by channel. Financing terms stay in a private tool and never appear in these pages. No client is named, no address is printed and no clock time is shown.