Driving 18 miles to buy gasoline

If the gas station with the lowest price is out of your regular driving area, you may not want to drive all the way to that station.

If you are trying to save money, you need to weigh four different factors: The gas mileage of your vehicle, the per-gallon savings you are chasing, the quantity of your gas purchase and the price of gasoline.

 

 

If you wish to calculate how far you can travel to buy gas and still save money, use this formula:

 

 
 

For example,  consider a car that gets 25mpg traveling to a gas station to buy 9 gallons of gas. If the driver can save 6¢ per gallon, she will break even on a 6.71 mile voyage (round trip).

There are other considerations as well, such as the time spent traveling to the gas station and the potential for longer lines and wait-times at the low-priced station.

On the other hand, what I am trying to encourage has a wider scope than just one tank of gasoline. By choosing the lowest-priced gasoline you are going to be helping force the price down in Sacramento. Each gallon you buy at a cheap-o station will act as a gentle reminder to the other stations: Lowest price gets the customers.

Update!

I wrote a little script to calculate how many miles you save by buying cheaper gasoline.
Use the drop-down menus to select the variables of your gas purchase.

Buying gas at per gallon, taking advantage of a price difference,
when filling up with for a car that gets

More information about Sacramento Gas Connoisseurs:

This page last updated May 1st, 2003 | Copyright © 2003 Rob Cockerham |

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