Half a Tank, Every Time

What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?

Everybody else’s travel advice sounds like it came out of a magazine. Pack light. Learn ten words of the language. Take the road less traveled.

Mine sounds like it came out of a truck stop, because it did. Never let the tank drop below half.

That’s it. That’s the whole rule. Half a tank is empty as far as I’m concerned, and I have followed it for years without ever once regretting it.

I don’t travel the way travel people travel. I don’t have a passport full of stamps and a carry-on that fits in the overhead bin. I have a 2013 F-150, a phone full of addresses I’ve never been to, and a job that sends me all over metro Atlanta on roads I didn’t know existed yesterday. Canton to Conley. Woodstock to Jonesboro. A leak in Dunwoody at eight in the morning and a proposal in Acworth by noon, with a Chick-fil-A drive-thru somewhere in between if I’m lucky.

Atlanta traffic doesn’t care about your schedule. One wreck on 575 turns a forty-minute drive into two hours of brake lights. And Georgia weather is worse than the traffic. A sky that looked fine when you left Canton can be throwing lightning over Cobb County by the time you get there, and every gas station on your route suddenly has a line.

Half a tank buys you options. It buys you the long way around the wreck instead of a shortcut through a neighborhood where you’re guessing at every turn. It buys you the chance to sit out the storm instead of driving through it because you’re afraid of running dry. It buys you the option to get home.

People tell me it’s paranoid. It’s not paranoid. It’s arithmetic.

Run it through the same two questions my dad Kirk taught me to ask about everything. Does it last? A full tank lasts longer than a quarter tank, which sounds obvious until you’re the guy coasting toward an exit you’ve never used, doing math in your head about whether the station on the corner is open. What does it cost when it doesn’t? It costs the job. It costs the homeowner waiting on a roof that is actively leaking while you’re walking to a gas station with a borrowed can. It costs your name, which in this business is the only thing you can’t buy back at the pump.

I learned to think this way on the roof. You don’t start a job with exactly enough shingles and hope the supplier is feeling generous. You order extra. You stage the truck the night before. You check the radar before you climb, because the sky does not send a warning text. A half tank is the same idea, just horizontal. Material on hand before you need it.

It applies at home, too. Three kids under seven turn a trip to the grocery store into an expedition. Somebody always needs a bathroom, somebody left a shoe in the other car, and somebody is always hungry five minutes after lunch. Giang packs the cooler like we’re crossing a desert, and she’s right to. Leave with more than you think you’ll need, because the day will take more than you think it will.

The oldest asked me once why Daddy fills up when the truck isn’t empty yet. I told him the truth: because empty is too late to fix. You don’t wait for the light to come on. By the time it does, you’re already negotiating. The light is not a plan. It’s a warning that you didn’t have one.

I know how this sounds. It’s a small rule for a man who likes big ones. But small rules are the ones that survive contact with a real Tuesday. Grand travel philosophies evaporate the first time you’re stuck on the interstate with a low-fuel light and a client calling to ask where you are. Half a tank survives. It has survived every July, every wreck, every pop-up storm, and every detour this state has thrown at me.

So that’s my travel advice, and I’ll give it for free, which is more than I can say for most of my advice. Pack whatever you want. Bring the snacks. Take the scenic route if it makes you happy.

Just don’t leave on empty.

Half a tank. Every time. The road can do what it wants after that.