An article in The Columbus Dispatch reports that a couple of years ago, Michael Bragg of Apopka, Fla., noticed his girlfriend (now his wife) jotting something down in a small notebook. She was keeping track of her car’s fuel mileage. “Her family had always done that,” he said, “and she just started doing it, too.”
And it occurred to him that he had no idea of what fuel mileage he was getting in his Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup or how much he was spending on gasoline each year. When he tallied up that last figure, and found out that his annual fuel expense was more than $3,000, he suddenly got interested.
As a professional software engineer, Bragg, 38, worked up a simple computer program that kept track of his fuel expenses and his truck’s mileage.
He began adding features that tracked mileage trends and incorporated information on how to improve mileage. When he offered the program to friends, he learned they were as interested as he was.
Thus began the Web site FuelClinic.com, which launched in May 2008. It allows free access to the programs Bragg developed. And for that matter, it’s still developing because he has quit his job and is working full time on the next generation of FuelClinic.com.
Bragg said one of his goals is to take the idea of fuel savings more mainstream, away from the traditional dedicated, hybrid-driving environmentalist who makes a second career out of saving fuel.
Photo by FuelClinic.com.