April 21, 2022 – CountUp

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. I hit a milestone on my car a couple of Tuesday mornings ago less than a mile away from my home. I hit 12,000 miles on my odometer, and I did so on my 607TH day of owning it. That’s right – it took me almost 20 months to drive 12,000 miles. The national average for driving here in the U.S. used to be 12,000 miles per year, but a recent study by the Federal Highway Administration states that the average American now drives 14,263 miles per year. They actually break it down by state. Here in Florida we drive an average of 14,557 miles per year, or just slightly above the national average.

I obviously help to bring our average down a little bit. Last year (2021) I drove 8,672 miles, and that was up from the 6,395 miles that I drove in 2020. Pre-COVID I drove an average of 10,244 miles per year from 2015 to 2019. My 12-year average from 2003 to 2015 was 9,854 miles per year.

How do I know all of this ? Well I have a spreadsheet that tracks it all.

Since 2015 my most-driven month is September (by far). I’ve driven to and from North Texas twice in September. My least-driven month is May – with August as a close-second. My most-driven day of the week is Friday, and least-driven – Wednesday.

Incidentally it took me 40 days to drive the 1,000 miles from 11,000 to 12,000 on my odometer. It took me 72 days to drive from 10,000 to 11,000. I think it will take (at least) 72 days to make it to 13,000.

We’ll see what happens between now and June. I’ll keep you updated here on #TravelThursday. Let’s keep traveling together.