CG Dawson wrote: Here in Ohio gas prices jumped 30 cents per gallon from $3.49 to $3.79 day before yesterday. The price pattern, in SW Ohio for several years has been to spike then slip a few cents, this scenario repeats itself almost weekly.
I am in SW Ohio as well and that is the way pricing has been for years. It use to be that prices declined on Sunday then jumped up Thursday night or Friday morning to catch all the people that filled up on Friday when they cashed their paycheck. Over the last couple of years Thursday's jump moved to Wednesday, then Tuesday. If you fill up Sunday night or Monday, whether your tank is empty or not, you will be ahead of the game 95% of the time.
Also, with a little bit of research one can determine where the little competitive pockets are around town that usually have the lowest prices and buy there to gain a price advantage. The worst thing that you can do, price wise, is blindly buy at one station (or only one brand) and only fill up when you are empty.
Many times retail chains offer a discount on gas for customers who use a store customer card for their other purchases. Monday I filled up my 2 cars at the Kroger store ($3.55 - .10/gal. discount = $3.44) in anticipation of the impending holiday spike. Today it is $3.79 and I can drive 800-900 miles before I need to purchase more.
What I don't get is that 72% of imported crude to the US comes from Canada! Why are you kids paying so much and we are paying about $1.20 more per gallon up here??? Someone somewhere(I suspect ala govt) is lying like hell to all of us.
Don't fall into the trap of driving too far to save on gas. My wife is used to getting her gas at Wal-Mart, and it's worth the saving if she's going there anyway. I did the math several months ago when gas was much cheaper and she would have to buy 40 gallons of gas at a time to make up for the 6 mile drive each way for the Wal-Mart gas.
Today she would save 12 cents a gallon at Wal-Mart and she gets 20 miles to a gallon. The station on the corner is less than a mile away. To go the extra distance to Wal-Mart costs $1.85, so to make up the difference she would have to buy 15.5 gallons of gas to break even, and that only takes into consideration the gas, not the other expenses of driving the car.
You may be doing yourself a favor by purchasing locally.
Paul
Paul & Helen
2002 Winnebago Journey DL
1999 Jeep Cherokee toad
Yellow Lab, Jodie and Chocolate Lab, Coco
FMCA 98905
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