> If you have a pickup truck, you actually get slightly better gas mileage if you leave the tailgate up instead of down.
>
> Fer"Mythbusters fan"rick

I don't watch Mythbusters very much, but I saw that bit the other day. I tried it years ago when I got my first truck and didn't notice any real difference either way.

There is a lot of turbulance inside an empty truck bed, but it's mostly one big bubble of air rolling right behind the cab. That's why you get that big pile of leaves, aluminum cans, juice boxes, scraps of duct tape, pine cones, plastic cups, donut rappers, Wal-mart bags, styrofoam hamburger boxes, hickory nuts, sawdust, parking tickets, bird feathers, sun dried 'possums, dead butterflies, newspapers, Brillo pads, yard sale signs, wiper blades, card board boxes, plastic twist ties, nuts, bolts, and screws right behind the cab. If you open the sliding back window on the cab a lot of that stuff comes inside as you gain speed.
Howard