Calculating ton-miles per gallon…?
I saw a commercial for the rail industry bragging about trains moving one ton of freight 423 miles per gallon of fuel….
This is obviously a play on numbers.
I cant seem to get it right in my head how the formula would look for figuring out the ton-miles per gallon..
I want to use it on aircraft to see how they compare.
Here are some rough facts
Boeing 747-400ERF
Cargo Capacity= 124000 tons
Max Fuel = about 57000 gallons
Max Range= about 7200 miles (nautical)
Any brainiacs out there know how to determine ton-miles per gallon of fuel?
I posed this question in the Aircraft section too… Sorry for the repeat, but I wanted it to show in both categories.
Assuming all that is true, how many miles can one ton of freight be moved by one gallon of fuel?
Well look at the units, ton-miles per gallon. It is implying that the weight in tons is multiplied by the maximum range in miles and then divided by the max fuel in gallons. So it would look like this:
(124000 tons)*(7200 miles)/(57000 gallons), which gives about 15663 ton-mi per gallon. I hope this helps. If it is not right, then don’t worry about it. Also, because it is nautical miles, it might change the factor of the max range by a little, but I am not sure.
Aero-TV: Boeing’s Biggest Jet–Dreamlifter’s Oshkosh Premier
