Something in a movie might not be realistic.

When gas prices went BASE jumping last autumn, it caught a lot of people off guard. I sure didn't expect prices to  ever go down again, and I'm not the only one.

Remember the Chrysler PRICELOCK $2.99-for-one-year gas guarantee?

Everyone I know is upbeat about the new price of gas, but I can't help but feel sorry for the poor folks who put  together this teaser trailer for the new Fast & Furious movie. The trailer features the highway-speed attempted  hijacking of a "fully-loaded gasoline land train" for which it quotes a street value of $1.4 million dollars.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809989992/trailer

In January, I realized that the price must have fallen, and set about re-calculating the value of this volatile target.

Gas tankers exist in two main configurations,
1) A semi pulling a single long 9,000 gallon trailer or
2) A truck with attached tank (4,500 gallon) pulling one trailer with one additional 4,500 gallon tank.

In the Dominican Republic, where this F&F scene unfolds, land trains are apparently used. The movie promo shows  a truck with five tank trailers (5 x 4,500 gallons), for a grand total of 22,500 gallons.

In the summer of '08, this gas may have been worth $4.60 per gallon, or $103,500 in total.
In February of '09, the price has fallen to $2.10 per gallon, for a total truck cargo value of $47,250.

That's not in the millions. How did they come up with $1.4 million? They selling gas for $62 a gallon somewhere?

Maybe they are combining french wine and diesel?

Did they include the price of the truck? Wayne Dawson at tankparts.com helped me to assess the value of a  gas truck plus four trailers. He let me know that the price for used equipment varies widely, but that I could get a tank truck for $160,000, and get four trailing tanks for $30,000-$70,000 each.

Thus, a whole used land train is worth $280,000 to $440,000, plus $50,000 for the gas inside. We are just barely breaking the $0.5 million mark.

I think someone has been sniffing too much Nitrous Oxide.

Fast & Furious opens April 3, 2009.