Wise Bread | Personal Finance and Frugal Living Forums

Note: I have not done any research on this specific question, but I am a physicist.

If you've ever seen a wind-tunnel test, you'll have seen the long tail formed by a car or airplane. Alongside, however, the airstream is turbulent, meaning that swirls and eddies spin off and can dramatically increase air resistance. The amount of turbulence is determined primarily by the "roughness" or irregularity of the object moving through the air (or water), and so a truck would very probably cause a lot of turbulence.

In short: I expect that driving alongside a truck would increase air resistance and thus worsen fuel economy.

Reply

Please keep the comments civil and on-topic. Abusive or inappropriate comments will be removed without warning. By posting here you agree to our terms of use.

Your name:

E-mail:

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

If you leave a link (include the http:// part), your name will be linked to your homepage.

Subject:

Comment: *

You may use some HTML for formatting: <strong>bold text</strong>, <em>italics</em>, and <a href="">for links</a>. Empty lines are automatically converted to paragraph breaks.

Or click the link above that says 'enable rich-text' to use the fancy editor.

Captcha

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Math Question: * 2 + 0 =

Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Have more to say? Join the discussions at Wise Bread's Finance and Frugality Forums.