Going the Extra Mile to Save on Gas
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.10.06
In Canada, people are burning gas, driving around to find cheaper fuel. Shell now changes its prices 400,000 times per year. "people will cross the street for 1/10th of a cent per litre" says Ted Stoner, spokesman for the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute. Entire websites are devoted to finding the lowest gas prices- spotters report the prices and the websites update automatically. An 85 year old friend of our mother puts on her bathrobe at 9:30 at night and goes out on a special driving trip just for gas, because that is when the prices usually drop. We would be interested to do the math and figure out how far you drive to save a nickel a tankful before you spend more getting there than you save- we suspect that driving less saves both fuel and money. ::Globe and Mail
It's a rather simple equation. Simply take the distance to the requested gas pump minus the distance to the nearest gas pump, divide it by the mileage your car gets, and you'll get the number of gallons you'll use to get to the pump. Multiply this by the price you'll pay to for the gas once you get there, and that's the cost of getting gas.
Then, take the difference between the price of gas at the nearest pump and the price of gas at the requested pump, and multiply that by the amount of gas you need to fill up your tank.
If the first number is smaller than the second number, then you're better of driving to get gas.
(And to think I never thought I'd use word problems!)
It's a rather simple equation. Simply take the distance to the requested gas pump minus the distance to the nearest gas pump, divide it by the mileage your car gets, and you'll get the number of gallons you'll use to get to the pump. Multiply this by the price you'll pay to for the gas once you get there, and that's the cost of getting gas.
Then, take the difference between the price of gas at the nearest pump and the price of gas at the requested pump, and multiply that by the amount of gas you need to fill up your tank.
If the first number is smaller than the second number, then you're better of driving to get gas.
(And to think I never thought I'd use word problems!)
Not to mention that you save time and stress if you just don't worry about tenths of cents.
It's even better to just pass by the gas stations on your bike, though :)
I live in a good sized city in Ontario, Canada. This report is 100% true! Of course I ride my bike around town as I don't have a car, but I have observed the gas stations at night time.
Every day during the week people will line up to get gas at 99.9 when it is usually 104.0 during the day. It takes 20 to 40 minutes to get gas at night because of all the cars lining up.
Of course common sense would say that those people are not really saving much idling their cars while waiting to pump up... but hey.
Of course, if your commute takes you past 5 gas stations, knowing which of those to pull into to buy your gas makes sense. That's how I use the cheap-gas tracking data.
If you do route-planning anyway (and you should) using these price-trackers can produce an optimized route with a cheap fill-up for your week's gas.
But driving across town (and Calgary has a lot of "across") to save 2 cents on the litre is just stupid. Even more idiotic are the fools who idle their SUVs in the inevitable "cheapest gas in town" half-hour line-up.
wow. you could hear the echo all across canada! I was going to say the same thing, when i noticed a 2 block lineup 2 nights ago for .99/L but i kept on pedalling (past 2 organic fruit stores and 3 non-perc drycleaners) just to look at the cute biodiesel pump at the evolved gas-station in my neighbourhood. then i biked home...