Your car(Mine is pretty light at 2400 lbs with me in it) weighs more than 1 ton. The extra 30 lbs of gas is utterly irrelevant as it induces as worst a .3% decrease.

If you consider how long your car is running to pull your car next to the pump and then pull out of the filling station I’d wager you use more than a few grams of gas. A few grams of gas is all you save by not filling up all the way. You definitely burn at least that much navigating into and out of the station.

Fill up all the way and save gas. Also most cars have a slightly pressurized tank. Maintaining the pressure after purging to allow the fuel nozzle in requires more work with a half tank than a full tank.

3rd factor is you don’t know when you will be filling up so if you have to deviate course anymore than maybe 2-300 meters its not worth it. Plus consider the navigating the station with slow speed and wasted idling fuel.

Also, I sold gas for years at a station with underground tanks. They each held 7,000 gallons and the top of the tanks and the pipes were at least 3 feet underground. The level of the fuel would normally be much deeper into the ground. Fuel was taken out fron the bottom of the tank where it is coolest. As anybody who has or sells heat pumps using well water for heat exchange will tell you, temperatures underground don’t change very much or very quickly. I’d even bet a 7,000 gallon above ground fuel tank wouldn’t change much in temperature from night to day unless it was mostly empty.

Thus there is no advantage to filling up in the morning and the only advantage to having a half tank of fuel is the savings in not hauling all that extra weight around.

And here in the US we all feel entitled to cheap gas because it was always cheap.

It is NOT just about the gas. It is just an increase of cost of living on top of every other increase, along with an inability to get good paying jobs that is putting a pinch on lower middle-middle class people.

Here we go, an example. I am a computer repair tech in Columbia, SC.

I make 1600 a month before taxes. Since I am a contract worker, my taxes arnt taken out of my pay. Realize MOST people have close to 15-25% taken out to cover tax related stuff.

Rent-575 a month for an apartment
Car- 160 a month for a 2004 pontiac grand am (37 MPG.. note financed through the company i work for!)
insurance-80 a month ( again, through company)
Water-50 a month (and going up)
Electricity-150 a month (and going up)
Cable TV/Internet-130 a month ( my only vice)
Food-310 a month (only 5 dollars per person per day for 2 people)
And my gas bill.. a fill up a month, cause I live 5 minutes from work… 52 dollars

Grand total of 1507, leaving me with 93 dollars to put aside for taxes/emergency (which isnt enough to cover the estimated taxes!)

twice a year I get an “extra” paycheck of 800 dollars which does nothing more than go to paying off debt accumpiated not able to pay bills.

Laugh now

Gas evaporates more quickly the more air it has in the tank. Thus, we should keep our tanks as full as possible, generally re-filling when we hit the half-mark. This improves the bang for your buck on the life of a fill-up.

The one downfall to this strategy in times like these is the chance of that full tank being siphoned.

Also, when filling the tank, you should use the lowest speed to fill the tank. A similar principle applies, but more nefarious. Filling at a faster rater increases the amount of air-bubbles found within the gas and effectively causes you to pay more for the displacement of gas with air. I think this may be a nominal effect, but I fill my tank as slowly as possible.

One last gas saving gem for you is to consider trying to fill up at the start of the day. Gas expands as it rises in temp. If you get gas before temperatures have a chance to warm the underground gas, you will effectively shave the cost of your fill-up.

Bonus: I’m a bit of an environmentalist, but I question what value there is in keeping oil in its natural state. Moreover, I have no love of the oil industry. Our government seems to have no desire to limit their profits, so I’ve decided to play their game. The only way I can envision forcing us to move into a more reliable, renewable resource, is to use up all the gas. It could be difficult as consumers, because we’re taking the biggest hit financially, but if you all want to keep driving and want to help become oil-independent, then we either have to stop purchasing gas (for long enough to have an impact on oil profits) or use up the resource. I’m beginning to believe that we’ll be able to use up the oil before regulations encouraging alt. energy are in place.

So, let’s go! Have as many packages as possible shipped to your home, take as many roadtrips as possible and avoid flying until we can suck the texas tea dry!

i filed up today for £20 and just got over 15 litres

15 litres = 3.3 Imperial gallons = £20 = 39.04 $

and it seems too be going up each week..

The lesson for today is – You are not allowed to moan if you are running Cars or Trucks that do less than 35 to the gallon – which is pretty much all of your vehicles.

No Global Warming in America then?

I usually only fill up 1/2 a tank or so. Less weight and I only work about 5min. from home so it last me till the weekend.