Locating the Least Expensive Gasoline

Last week I attended a meeting about 7 or 8 miles from my house. I needed gasoline to get there. Of the four closest gas stations to my house, the least expensive gas was selling for (rounded up) $2.22/gallon. I drove to the meeting and on the way home I passed a station selling the same grade of gasoline for $2.13gallon. “Damn!” I thought, “I wish I had known that. As short as money is for me, I could use a $1.21 or so savings on a tank of gas.”

The problem is, looking for the cheapest gasoline and saving money is almost an impossible task. I would not have driven the 7 or 8 miles from my house to save nine cents a gallon; however, had I known of the price and since I was going past that station anyway, I would have gotten my gas there. Likewise, driving around seeking the least expensive gasoline is absurd because one can burn up more money trying a save a few cents than simply paying the more expensive price at a closer station.

That’s what fired me up yesterday when I happened on this website: GasBuddy.com. There one can not only find the average U.S. and Canadian gasoline prices over the past year, but by clicking on your state or Canadian province on its interactive map, one is given a list of all of the gasoline prices in your immediate area in the past 48 hours plus the date/time that price was changed. And best of all: the site is free!

For example, yesterday the cheapest gasoline near where I live was found at a Thornton’s station about 2 miles from my house: $2.16/gallon. If I wanted to drive another 3 miles to a Kroger and use my Kroger Plus Card, I could purchase gasoline there for $2.13/gallon.


The site also tells me where the highest priced gasoline can be found (although I have no idea why one would want to know that!) Yesterday the most expensive gasoline in the Louisville area cost $2.48/gallon and was sold by Marathon.

I hope my “find” can help those of you who, like me, are trying to reduce your automobile fuel costs by as much as possible in this time of rapidly changing gasoline prices.