In almost one year I put 1300 miles on my 2010 tacoma

I would do exactly this. I think one important factor is to try and drive the truck long enough to get it fully to temperature, and keep it there for 15 minutes at least. If this low mileage is the result of many short drives that do not fully heat the engine, then the oil will not be able to volatize contaminates effectively. This is bad news even with a short interval oil change. This is why Bill's advise is sound here. In my experience Synthetic oil, specifically Mobil 1, tends to build much less sludge in engines that are under used.

 

I need to send off for a Blackstone report, I've got the bottles, but I always forget at oil change time..

 

We need more info. Do you drive it everyday for only a mile or two? Or is it a once a month longer ride? If it's a lot of short trips, the engine will not warm up allowing the oil to become contaminated with unburned fuel vapors, acids, etc... If that's the case, I'd change the oil at least twice to three times per year. Definitely have an oil analysis completed as that'll give you a baseline on oil quality.

 

My wife drives a 2013 Rav4, so coming up on 5 years. She just hit 10k miles on the odometer. It runs synthetic from the factory anyways, so I change it once/year.

 

Short trips are Hell on oil as it never heats up enough to boil off the nasties left behind by blow-by of combustion by products--I would change it every six months...

 

Once a year.

Should have put up a Poll!

 

As others have stated I would worry more about it just sitting and not being driven.

And if it never warms up to evaporate moisture etc is as stated hell on the oil and engine.

 

The problem with the method you describe is that if you do not normally drive "long enough to get it fully to temperature, and keep it there for 15 minutes at least" you are "cooking" the results (no pun intended) to obtain tainted, "fudged", test results--not the actual properties of the oil as it is normally used.

A facility I managed years ago had a very large 1200 HP diesel generator (640 kW output), it ran up to operating temperature (about 45 minutes) once a month and was under a maintenance contract requiring engine oil testing four times a year; after a couple years I noticed they had never changed the engine oil and found that they were drawing a sample just after the "test run" when it was hot--I made them take a cold sample and it failed miserably--but it was saving the maintenance contractor 38 gallons of oil each change...

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't suggesting that he do that before the test. Of course, that would be stupid. I was suggesting that he do that as a matter of general practice. Making a practice of driving very short distances without ever giving the oil a chance to volatize contaminates is a problem regardless of how often you change the oil.

 

^ this!
You're throwing away good oil if you have less than 2K miles. It doesn't spoil like milk!

 

The issue with this low mileage scenario is not that the oil wears out or "goes bad" by itself. The issue is contamination. When that contamination mixes with moisture in a humid environment, you get sludge formation and the formation of acidic compounds. Both are bad for engines. Testing, as Bill Clearwater suggested, is the way to see whether this is happening. If the oil analysis comes back clean, you can keep extending the oil changes until you see a change, then back up a bit, or you can be more conscious of how you drive. Everything else is a WAG.

 

I have a relatively low mileage truck as well. I asked Blackstone specifically about a time based change interval when I had them do an analysis:

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A very important point that has already been brought up and is referenced in Blackstone's answer is down to how you drive those 1300 miles. Blackstone said "assuming that it's not contaminated" you can leave the oil as long as it takes to reach a given mileage. That is a big assumption though. My truck is driven infrequently and stored most of the year, but when it is driven it is driven for at least a few hundred highway miles. That kind of driving doesn't result in any oil contamination.

Short trips on the other hand are murder on oil. You tend to get lots of fuel contamination with repeated short trips. So if your truck is getting 1300 miles because you take it out around town every so often then that is probably oil that should be changed relatively frequently. If on the other hand your truck only goes out a few times a year on longer intercity trips on the highway then your oil should be fine for a long time.

I'd expect you could easily just do 12 month oil changes unless you are only driving the truck on trips less than 10 minutes. As others suggested you can always send in an oil sample to Blackstone to double check. You certainly will do no significant damage trying one 12 month interval and testing with Blackstone.

My truck will probably settle in at about 3000 miles per year. Based on my kind of driving and Blackstone results it looks like I should be able to do 2 year oil changes at about 6000 miles without any worry. Of course the flip side argument is that changing the oil on the V6 is actually incredibly easy to do and really not very expensive so why not do it more often?

 

doing the wife's '05 today....about 6500 miles....5w30 syn & OEM filter

its on the road every day........my '14 will get twice a year.....lower miles.....

do it just 'cause.....prob less than 8K annually.....$26 is cheap insurance

 

Absolutely, I misunderstood... The OP indicated he had a one mile trip, in that scenario driving it 'til the oil is hot and then some once a week would bev a good thing...

 

Wow 1300 a year it’ll last a lifetime bought mine in April 17 with 40k just turned 75k this week. I change oil every 10k filter oem @5k. Hope to get 250+.