gasoline cost per gallon | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

Three blocks from the Fresh Start there’s another place to buy gasoline. Cheaper?

I still have difficulty believing the low gasoline prices here in town. Of course, even the low prices here don’t match what the woman who runs the local military museum says she saw in Chadron, a town north of here about 58 miles: gasoline at $1.70 a gallon! It’s almost cheap enough to drive up there for gasoline. Certainly, if I had to drive up that way for any reason, I’d keep that price in mind and refuel there instead of here.

I get gasoline here, mostly because it’s a block away from me, just around the corner.

Last summer, this sign read 3.569.

Four blocks away from where I buy gas, this mini-mart sells gasoline for less.

Quite a bit less, it seems!

Three blocks from the Fresh Start there’s another place to buy gasoline. Cheaper?

No, but it’s still cheaper than where I buy gasoline. Diesel users get a break here, though.

Clear on the other side of town (and past another station I’ll come back to when I’m on the right side of the road for photos) is the new Maverik station, the one I thought might be behind this little price deflation….

It’s cheaper than where I buy gasoline, but not the cheapest place in town. It sits across from a sister station to the one where I buy gasoline. The sister station’s price sign was, um, “not working”.

Well, I doubled back to the Git and Split (sic), which is open 24 hours a day, and is about two-thirds of the way across town from me. If I drive somehwere before the sun comes up, I often buy gasoline here.

Well, I doubled back to the Git N Split (sic), which is open 24 hours a day, and is about two-thirds of the way across town from me. If I drive somewhere before the sun comes up, I often buy gasoline here. It’s the only branded gasoline in town, though Cenex is a Co-Op station, one of three along this street operated by them.

And it is the price winner fro my town since you get a 10¢ a gallon break for paying cash. That's why you Git N Split: you are robbing the owner every time you pump gasoline into your car! :)

And it is the price winner for my town since you get a 10¢ a gallon break for paying cash. That’s why you “Git N Split”: you are robbing the owner every time you pump gasoline into your car! 🙂

Those who support laissez–faire capitalism probably don’t realize that’s what’s behind the price of energy, a market driven by the forces of supply and demand, essentially unregulated, though heavily taxed.

The dramatic change in the cost of a gallon of gasoline in my area (Western Nebraska-South Dakota Black Hills) between last July, when I actually made some trips out of town, to December, when I pretty much limited my trips to around town, can be seen in this table:

gas

Days before the per gallon cost of gasoline dropped to the low in the orange section above, I actually thought I was making out like a bandit paying 30¢ a gallon more, or, rounded, $2.30 a gallon.

So dramatic was the change in those few days that I had to go around the block to verify I actually saw gasoline priced at slightly less than $2.00 a gallon for regular unleaded, a price so low I can’t recall when I last pay that little. Then, driving across town, I noticed three independent stations were charging even less than that by 5¢ a gallon!

I rarely drive more than 3000 miles a year (4828 km), so the cost of gasoline is a minor consideration for me. I refill the tank every month to six weeks, and pay whatever the market demands. In high months like July, I am grateful I don’t have a truck with two tanks to fill.

Though I drive a full-sized car, it actually gets 32 mpg on the highway, and a bit more than 23 mpg in combined driving. My first car, a 1970 VW Beetle, got pretty much the same mpg!

What are you paying for gasoline these days? For those who blamed high energy costs on President Obama, I hope you now give him 100% of the credit for the low costs, though only very ignorant people think he has a damn thing to do with either. It’s all about laissez–faire capitalism, supply and demand driven economics.