Which forms of cost-cutting are too far?

4WD adds rotational inertia to your system, which means increased fuel consumption 100% of the time. AWD mitigates this somewhat by disconnecting one of the axles when the computer determines it is not needed but you are still carrying the weight. For fleet vehicles, fuel is a major cost and even a 1mpg difference can have a massive impact on the cost to run the fleet. Now, lets scale this down to individual owners. Lets assume that since we are talking about bigger SUVs and trucks we're in the mid-high teens for fuel economy. Call it 16 mpg for the RWD and 15 mpg for the 4WD/AWD. Let's also assume that this owner is an average driver, and in the US that means about 15k miles annually, and let's estimate the average cost of a gallon of fuel to be $4. For the RWD truck, your annual fuel spend will be: (15,000 miles / 1 year) x ( 1 gallon / 16 miles) x ($4 / 1 gallon) = $3750 per year For the 4WD truck, your annual fuel spend will be: (15,000 miles / 1 year) x (1 gallon / 15 miles) x ($4 / 1 gallon) = $4000 per year A delta of $250 per year probably won't make or break you, but over the course of 5 years that's $1250. Now, if you could get a truck that was designed for fuel economy to handle whatever you need it to, FWD hybrid "trucklets" do exist and using the same figure with the combined fuel economy rating of 37 mpg and your annual fuel spend there would be: (15,000 / 1 year) x (1 gallon / 37 miles) x ($4 / 1 gallon) = $1621.62 per year Which is a substantial savings for even individuals. For fleets running dozens of trucks that maybe only need to haul people and the odd large bit of gear, having options is never bad.