Thread: No claptrap please

Hi Rattrap,

They aren't my figures of course; they are the figures used by the ATO and those folks aren't reputed highly for their generosity!

I'll change one of my earlier dictums that fuel cost probably isn't significant in the scheme of things for a round Oz trip with your proposed rig. I asked a friend yesterday who has a 3.5 ltr 6 cylinder Toyota near new diesel. They just towed a full sized caravan last season to far N QLD then across to Darwin and down the Stuart H'way (yawn yawn) back to Tassie. Averaged about 16.5 ltr per 100 klm. That's 33 cents per klm with fuel averaging 200 c per ltr before you strike a blow on the other costs or about half the running costs of an average car not towing a caravan.

I wouldn't want to get pedantic about those costings.In the end it's about whether you do your sums from the top down or from the bottom up when you have already decided what you want to do. I think that's personal philosophy stuff which no one else has the right to question. Most folk look on a car as a life essential and they write off the capital to zero the day they buy it. I haven't got a problem with that at the personal level but when it's applied to business investment decision making it usually ends in tears for the investor and $'s for the administrator and receiver!

There's a lot of serious hobby woodworkers out there who have capital investments in buildings, machinery tools and timber of at least the order of the $'s of the rig you suggest and some much more than that. They're happy: then everyone's happy.

On a positive note we have friends who went on the road four years ago with a second hand slide on camper on a second hand Toyota flat tray. They started their career on the road by driving from Tassie. to the Kimberly. They have been back once: to sell their house. How about that!!

Old Pete