Why wait so long to get gas? (save by filling up more often during rising prices)

[wesman1299]

This isn't a 'mod', it's more of a suggestion or question:

I've been checking users' fuel logs on this site recently and I've been surprised to see how many people who are waiting until an empty tank to fill up. With fuel prices rising so rapidly as of late, why are people waiting so long? I know having a full tank of fuel adds weight, but the money you save by filling up more often during rising prices should far offset the extra cost of driving with a full tank.

I'm a number junkie myself, and I understand the reasoning behind depleting an entire tank for sake of consistency, but isn’t one of the motivations behind ecomodding to reduce the amount of money spent on fuel? Of course, it’s probably not practical for some users to fuel up more often than they already do (particularly those who drive very often), but if you’re waiting two weeks to fuel up when it would still be practical to fuel up sooner, why wait for gas to rise $0.10-$0.20 when you can buy the same amount of gas you’re going to be using anyway for less cost?

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by wesman1299

With fuel prices rising so rapidly as of late, why are people waiting so long?
I know having a full tank of fuel adds weight, but the money you save by filling up more often during rising prices should far offset the extra cost of driving with a full tank.

I fill up more often than I need to, as I use a website that informs me about upcoming price changes, and I fill up according to their information.
It helps that I have 3 of the cheapest pumps in the area right along my commute, so I don't have to drive around to get fuel.

The weight reduction won't have much impact anyway - and if it does, you can always fill up part of half a tank

[cfg83]

wesman1299 -

Each to his/her own. I typically fillup from 1/4 to 3/4 tank because I did that before Ecomodder. You can interpret the "Eco" in Ecomodder based on your own world view. You can see it as Economic (save money) or Ecological (save the planet) or both. What I think is true for most people is that once you have established your "pattern", that is what you like to keep doing. For instance, I think I have a pretty good handle on my "tank to tank" trends because I am filling up every "X" number of miles.

In the short term I'm not worried about the price of gas because that is outside my control. Now, if *everyone* was doing what we are doing here on Ecomodder, we would have an effect because we would be driving down demand at the macro level.

CarloSW2

[j12piprius]

Originally Posted by euromodder

I use a website that informs me about upcoming price changes, and I fill up according to their information.

Could you share the link?

Also do you happen to have one for the stock market too?

[Odin]

since its only march this isn't as big an issue as the summer months but gasoline fumes from spilled fuel is a huge issue as far as pollution is concerned- if you fill up less often you spill less fuel, and even if you don't think you spill a lot just the open gas cap and drips on the handle release a lot of fumes

[Angmaar]

The larger (gallons) the fill up the more accurate it is.

[Frank Lee]

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post182705

Since you are a numbers junkie, you know that if you "beat" a dime increase and your little car fills with 10 gallons, you save under a buck. If one were to put the time into it, they could estimate how much extra fuel is being used (wasted) with each extra gas station sojourn.

[user removed]

My current car came from a salvage auction with 10 gallons of gas in the tank. Unfortunately, by the time it went back on the road that same gas was almost a year old.

In order to get the old gas out of the mix as fast as possible I like to run it down to about 2 gallons left of the stated 20 gallon capacity. I also like driving over 600 miles on every tank which is now happening with the warmer weather.

I tried the call the future gas price game in 2008 when I bought some 5 gallon gas cans to keep some extra fuel. Around here if a hurricane hits you can loose the ability to get fuel for a week or more (happened here in 2003, I had 65 gallons stored). I actually gave some gas to the local counties refugee shelter for people whose homes were destroyed in the flooding from Isabel in 2003, so they had a generator for power and cleaned and put fuel in my next door neighbors generator so we could save the food in the refrigerator in both houses. We got 14 showers out of a 40 gallon hot water tank with no electricity except from the shared generator.

If I bought 15 extra gallons of fuel the price would probably drop .

regards
Mech

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by johnlvs2run

Could you share the link?

Are you sure you want to come over to Belgium and pay over 8 USD / gallon ?

They're seldom wrong with their predictions, BTW.
The official max. price is set by the government based on a formula that one can use to predict where the pump price is going, based on the oil price.

Also do you happen to have one for the stock market too?

Unfortunately not.

[fjasper]

Originally Posted by johnlvs2run

Could you share the link?

Another way to predict gas price fluctuation is to watch the price of crude (buy a share in an oil ETF [such as stock symbol: USO] on Yahoo finance [or dozens of others, I'm sure]), and figure gas will lag a little bit. Around here, it seems like about a week.

This won't account for regional variations, but it seems pretty solid at predicting trends.