While this turned out to be a bit more difficult challenge than I originally anticipated, I have an answer (actually, a lot of answers). You may recall that I rather enjoy the art of spreadsheet makin’; so, you can probably guess where this is going.

Obviously, the answer to Ray’s question depends on how far you live from the store and what kind of car you drive. For the purpose of providing a simple answer to the question, let’s assume (for now) that you drive a 2006 mid-size sedan; and, you live 1 mile from a Walmart. What’s that? You don’t drive a 2006 mid-size sedan and live 1 mile from a Walmart? That’s pretty unAmerican of you. Stay tuned though…you’ll be able to get an estimated cost based on the kind of car you drive and distance you drive at the end of this post (exciting, right?).

Another note: I wasn’t content merely factoring in the cost of gas. You’re putting wear and tear on your car as well. Also, your car loses a tiny bit of value every extra mile that it is driven. So, I factored all of this into my numbers. I got my numbers on fuel economy from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm and my numbers on wear & tear and depreciation from http://www.edmunds.com/tco.html. (awesome sites for those of you who suffer from my particular form of statistical psychosis by the way).

The generic answer: A 2006 mid-size sedan costs around 30 cents per mile to drive at current gas prices ($3.65/gallon). So, if you live 1 mile from a Walmart, it costs you an extra 60 cents (round trip) in order to obtain that 1 gallon of milk.

I used Google Docs to create a fancy spreadsheet for you to use. If you’re interested (who wouldn’t be?!), head on over to the spreadsheet: click here to view spreadsheet. Fill in the highlighted boxes and huzzah! A reasonable estimate of the trip cost will be shown for most major vehicle types. Please don’t edit anything other than the highlighted boxes. You’ll ruin it for everyone. Don’t be that guy. By the way, does anyone know how to turn this little spreadsheet into a webpage? That would really help me out….because as it stands, multiple people editing this spreadsheet at the same time is bound to get cumbersome.

Oh, and you should thank Ray for inspiring me to bring you this life-changing information. Head on over to iTunes and download a few Texas Heat songs. Bonus: I’ll pay for an iTunes download of Ray’s album (in the form of a $10 iTunes gift card) for 2 randomly selected people who both leave a comment below about the greatness of this spreadsheet and like my blog’s Facebook page in the next 3 days.  As always, thanks for reading.