Not Really Saving Anything

Back, oh, fifty or sixty years ago, me Grandpa Joe had several delivery drivers who worked for his welder rental business. One in particular, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, seemed to have a mental block about putting gas in his truck. And it drove me Pops crazy.

At the time you could fill up one of the trucks for around five bucks. Dad would give the drivers five dollar bills as necessary to put gas in their vehicles. Yet invariably Cloyce would return to the old barn on fumes, to triumphantly hand the five spot back to the old man proclaiming "I saved you five bucks, Bill!"

The trouble was that he wasn't really saving anybody anything. From a practical standpoint all it really meant was that on his next delivery Cloyce's first stop would be the gas station and not the job site. It would make more sense to gas up on the return from one trip, that job being done, than to take ten minutes before the next job simply to fill up the tank.

Cloyce did it constantly, and it irked me Pops every time. No amount of explanation could convince Cloyce that it was better to gas up today than add a complication to tomorrow, a complication which might easily snowball: you have to load the truck a few minutes earlier, then get to the gas station and it may be crowded, or the roads might be jammed, and so on. But all Cloyce could see what the he 'saved' five dollars today, not that he would just have to spend it tomorrow anyway.

Still, he saved me Pops a lot of Lincolns, one day at a time. If only Dad could have kept all those fivers, I suppose maybe he would have been rich.