Poor gas milage

One tank of gas is not enough to compare mileage. Or are you saying the computer's readout of mpg estimate is showing less? Try a tank or two of premium and see if that helps. Keep track of gas mileage. Driving techniques have a lot to do with gas mileage, as does long trips vs. short trips, highway cruising vs. city driving. For best mileage, do regular maintenance and keep the car in top running condition-good spark plugs and clean filters and clean oil ! Attend to minor problems before they escalate.
If you want to check actual miles per gallon, start with a full tank. Write the odometer reading down, and go. Everytime you put gas in, write down the amount. When you are close to 1,000 miles from the time you started, go fill the tank and include that amount of gas to your previous list. Now add up all the gas used and divide it into the miles to get miles per gallon. (976 miles/31.8 gallons = 30.69 mpg ) . Only one tank will skew your numbers, might be off cause the tank was filled more to the top than the previous fill-up. About a thousand miles of driving will give you a very accurate figure of miles per gallon for your car.

What grade of fuel are you using? There are many conditions that effect gas mileage. The way a vehicle is driven, is it shifting correctly, flooring it to get up to speed from dead stop also known as Jack Rabbit starts, driving with the defroster on when it isn't needed or the setting just above that can be used. Back in the 90's most car manufacturers made a change to their heating.cooling system that caused the AC compressor to kick in when the selector was set to defrost. This puts drag on teh motor and decreases gas mileage. Build up on valves and low compression in the firing cylinders will cause you to lose gas mileage as well. Do a compression check on the motor to make sure you don't have abnormally high compression or low compression on cylinders and use a bottle of gas treatment in your fuel to clean some of the carbon build up from injectors and valves. Also start using the Mid grade fuel. Not the High Octane in your area. In Texas we typically have 3 choices 87, 89 and 93 to choose from. Low grade is enough to run the vehicle but performance is low as well as mileage. I use the 89 octane for better performance and better mileage. The High Octane or 93 isn't really good as it leads to higher carbon build up on the valves. Also check your oil often and make sure your changing it every 4000 miles at the longest. All of this along with making sure you change the Air Filter every 5000 miles will increase your mileage.

So what is the mileage and what do you expect it to be? What engine do you have? Transmission? 2wd? 4wd?what do you do with the truck? do you haul anything in it? trailer? topper? any hills where you live? short trips? highway? Elevation?.

scrap this gas guzzling machine and recommend an electric car or a peugeot 107 or a citreon C1 that do 50+++++ miles per gallon

It could be 2 things. The grade of gas you're using and / or your style of driving. Bump up to the next level of gas and don't put your foot into it as much. Get off the gas earlier when coming to a stop. I have a full size SUV and I average 24 MPG city.

Your fuel mileage is about 24.8 MPG.
Your 1997 Neon is reported as getting between 25-34 miles to the gallon (depending on driving conditions)
Do you do a lot of city driving, or highway?
Do you jet around everywhere (like me) or drive like someone's great grandmother?
If you do a lot of the former, you're actually getting good gas mileage.. a lot of the latter and .. well.. check your fuel tank for leaks.

I have the same issue of low gas mileage. My 2008 Kia Rondo with V6 (2.7Lt) gets 20-21 mpg in average. Even for highway mileage, it is around 21-22mpg. Very poor gas mileage. Disappointed. I hope it would improve in the future.

Wide tires make less gas millage, get narrow wheels, let the car accomplish speed slowly from 0 to 30, look at air filter,if shortly replaced, oxygen censor, 15 miles is normal 16 miles per gallon is good for a V8

nap Z engine is a venerable work horse using dual ignition design but wont get much better mileage than you are experiencing now ... try larger tires..more air pressure. premium fuel every 10th tank full (unocal 76 , 91 octane).....free flowing air filter (K&N ) hotter spark plugs ..indexed prefereably...timing advanced slightly..tailgate down or install topper or tonneau bed cover... check jet chips or other co. for performance computer upgrade...good luck

I was just listening to Car Talk on NPR (Click & Clack) talking about this exact thing in response to a callers complaint about poor mileage. Their advise was to: a. check the compression and b. check the thermostat.
With your 2001 being 7 years old your mileage is probably under 100,000 so your compression is probably OK. If you do check it the good compression should be about 150 PSI; if it's down around 100 PSI that could account for the poor mileage.
As for the thermostat if your engine temperature doesn't get un into the normal range fairly soon, the computer thinks the engine is cold and adjusts the choke accordingly which uses more gas

Hope this helps Good Luck Loringh