How far to drive (or not) to buy cheaper fuel...

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How far to drive (or not) to buy cheaper fuel...

"Average £38.81 topup"
Round here that's just over 27 litres - I always let the tank get low-ish before topping up so my average is 40 - 45 litres (45 is on the light).
I wonder if they also took into account wasted time travelling?
 
"Average £38.81 topup"
Round here that's just over 27 litres - I always let the tank get low-ish before topping up so my average is 40 - 45 litres (45 is on the light).
I wonder if they also took into account wasted time travelling?
I'm a student. Put 10 quid in, which is 7.2Litres in these petrol prices. Today I put £15 in, 10.8Litres.
That'll last me almost a week.
Filling up is overrated ;)
 
I never fill up, why carry all that extra weight about if you don't need to?

I did a calculation based on a 40 litre fill up and the price I last paid for fuel and what it would cost if 5p a litre cheaper basically my car is averaging 64mpg and I could travel 33miles to pay 5p a litre less before it cancelled out the saving on a 40litre fill.

So say 16.5mile radius to buy cheaper fuel when I regularly travel between Norwich and Ipswich so can divert from one of those areas gives me a huge area I can cover if I want to........ I generally go to the shell station 500 yards down the road
 
I never fill up, why carry all that extra weight about if you don't need to?

In some ways yes..I prefer to spend as little time at the petrol station as possible yes I suppose it makes the car heavier but so does the sub and amp, and the back seat and the passenger seat...so depends what you value, I personally value not spending time faffing on at petrol stations. I brim it, drive round till the light comes on then brim it again usually about 300-320 miles and a fortnight later.

As most I will go out of my way is about 3 miles, mainly most of all the local petrol stations are close together and all the other ones are so far into the sticks they have a 15p premium on fuel anyway. Although the northeast is one of the cheapest places to get fuel apparently.
 
(in the days when NOTHING was open on a Sunday).

This combined with my car's ability to do 100 miles with the fuel light on means that its not really an issue.

I calculated the difference in weight between £20 of diesel which I normally put in and a full tank to be about 25- 28Kg.

Because I track my fuel in an app called road trip I can see I have been the the pumps 9 times so far this year. (Stop once every week and a half)

Covered 2100 miles since 1st January so about 230 miles between stops
And in that time spent £215 on fuel (10.2p a mile)

I tend not to carry unnecessary weight in the car I'm not going to start unbolting seats but putting less fuel in each stop does have an impact and yes brimming the tank could cut down on the amount of stops I make but would probably increase my price per mile

If I pay 1p a mile more because of carrying extra weight and cover an average 12,000 miles a year it equates to £120 more in motoring costs. And you can do a lot with £120 ;)
 
This combined with my car's ability to do 100 miles with the fuel light on means that its not really an issue.

I completely understand people that fill up their cars when the light comes on and such but I completely agree with the above. Some people seem to NEED to stop for fuel as soon as their fuel light comes on. I drive around with the fuel light on for several days. When my fuel light comes on I think, oh look I have 1/8th of a tank (I think it might be a smidge more than that). I normally get through about 1/8th of a tank every 3 or 4 days of driving therefore I just continue driving until its low enough that I can't go much further without it running out. Obviously if I'm driving an unknown route I will top up before it gets that low but on my daily commutes I know where I am going, how much fuel it takes to get there and back and where all the petrol stations are.
Also the whole student thing means some weeks I just don't have enough money to buy a worthwhile amount of fuel so I just let it run as empty as I dare :rolleyes:
 
If I pay 1p a mile more because of carrying extra weight and cover an average 12,000 miles a year it equates to £120 more in motoring costs. And you can do a lot with £120 ;)

Wouldn't even cover my road tax :( that and I've have to cope with being stuck behind an old giffer paying in coppers twice as often...
 
Its all to do with time versus cost. Personally I brim fill my 500 and top up once a week. This is done at the cheapest patrol station in my area, but I won't go out of my way to get cheap fuel. The time this saves me more than compensates for the extra 1mpg I'm using. (Although if I'm in High Wycombe I tend to top up as its cheaper than my local place by 3-5p per litre.) It also means that I don't have to 'think' about those little trips that occur outside the norm.
 
i fill to the brim
A - less journeys to fill up
B - once im full i dont have to think about it
C - car carries alot more momentum down hills and means less fuel to attack the otherside
D - I average about 100miles per 1/4 tank on my car, its pretty much spot on across somehow....

Ziggy
 
I'm also very much a brim to light filler, will wait until I've a gallon or less in the tank before filling, will then brim it. Doing 20k miles a year I haven't the time to be queuing and filling every few hundred miles, I'm a 550-600 miles a tank jobby.

Back to the original question though, never go more than a mile for every 1ppl saving, 50L + is 50p a tank saving per 1ppl saving 2 miles driven is 22p, so only saving 28p by driving to get cheaper fuel.
 
Yeah im a brimmer too. I've been playing chicken with my fuel light lately, just to see how far I could push it. My previous best fill up was 45.007L, the other day I managed 45.050L - my fuel tank is 45L with a 5-7L reserve :D Running on fumes ? :eek:

ASDA/Tesco are cheapest for fuel around here, but they are a good 3/4 miles out of the way. Normally only 2/3p cheaper, so is it really worth my time an the effort of going out of the way JUST to get fuel... no, so I normally fill up at the Morrisons, or the Shell opposite it (they usually price match), on my daily drive.

I always fill it up and keep going after it clicks until it clicks again, twice. I'm averaging 411 miles per full tank.
 
i fill to the brim
A - less journeys to fill up.
B - once im full i dont have to think about it
C - car carries alot more momentum down hills and means less fuel to attack the otherside
D - I average about 100miles per 1/4 tank on my car, its pretty much spot on across somehow....

Ziggy

A, fair point
B, with half a tank you don't have to 'think about it'? You just follow the gauge as you would with any amount of fuel? At what point do you start thinking about it?
C, the more momentum you carry down hill the more weight to haul up the other side as a result the effect is cancelled out, Newton's third law
D, your fuelly sig suggests otherwise, about 85miles to a quarter tank which is 60miles less per tank than you claim?

Back to the original question though, never go more than a mile for every 1ppl saving, 50L + is 50p a tank saving per 1ppl saving 2 miles driven is 22p, so only saving 28p by driving to get cheaper fuel.

This is the real point, If I drive 5 miles down the road to buy cheaper fuel and I save 2p per litre was all that time and effort really worth a 10 mile round trip really worth saving £1 on a tank

But you have to also consider wear on tyres brakes and clutch etc etc

Ziggy
You do to some degree to a point but if you consider a set of brake pads and discs might cost £40 and do 50,000 miles the cost is next to nothing 100,000 miles for a clutch 40,000 miles for a tyre they are all part of the cost of motoring and no one is going to calculate the exact cost per mile before deciding weather or not they are going to make a trip.

When we say 'trip to the pump' who actually makes a special trip just for fuel? I know people do, but I tend to just stop at a station on my route to where ever I'm going. My 100mile reserve means I can also be a bit picky over where that is if the garage I'm passing is expensive. So I can plot where to stop once the light comes on.

Asda round this way like to set their prices at .7 compared to the usual .9 so when everyone else is 141.9 for diesel asda is 141.7 making it cheapest, if you're lucky you might save your self 10p on a fill up so really not worth going out of your way. For me it would get me just under a mile
 
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A, fair point
B, with half a tank you don't have to 'think about it'? You just follow the gauge as you would with any amount of fuel? At what point do you start thinking about it?
C, the more momentum you carry down hill the more weight to haul up the other side as a result the effect is cancelled out, Newton's third law
D, your fuelly sig suggests otherwise, about 85miles to a quarter tank which is 60miles less per tank than you claim?



This is the real point, If I drive 5 miles down the road to buy cheaper fuel and I save 2p per litre was all that time and effort really worth a 10 mile round trip really worth saving £1 on a tank


You do to some degree to a point but if you consider a set of brake pads and discs might cost £40 and do 50,000 miles the cost is next to nothing 100,000 miles for a clutch 40,000 miles for a tyre they are all part of the cost of motoring and no one is going to calculate the exact cost per mile before deciding weather or not they are going to make a trip.

When we say 'trip to the pump' who actually makes a special trip just for fuel? I know people do, but I tend to just stop at a station on my route to where ever I'm going. My 100mile reserve means I can also be a bit picky over where that is if the garage I'm passing is expensive. So I can plot where to stop once the light comes on.

Asda round this way like to set their prices at .7 compared to the usual .9 so when everyone else is 141.9 for diesel asda is 141.7 making it cheapest, if you're lucky you might save your self 10p on a fill up so really not worth going out of your way. For me it would get me just under a mile

Its what i remember, tbh i fill up - make a note of the milage, and drive off
the trip counter i make vague notation of
Sometimes it well clear of 450
sometimes it 360 and every other figure inbetween, im not that anal about been 100% spot on with figures like above, the sort of average i get tho is 100mile per quater, what probably dont help is the first 1/4 is like 140miles, second 120, 80 then 60, the guage is somewhat opermistic about really how much fuel is in my tank

It all depends how i drive, where i drive etc etc and season, big time

Ziggy
 
This combined with my car's ability to do 100 miles with the fuel light on means that its not really an issue.

I calculated the difference in weight between £20 of diesel which I normally put in and a full tank to be about 25- 28Kg.

Because I track my fuel in an app called road trip I can see I have been the the pumps 9 times so far this year. (Stop once every week and a half)

Covered 2100 miles since 1st January so about 230 miles between stops
And in that time spent £215 on fuel (10.2p a mile)

I tend not to carry unnecessary weight in the car I'm not going to start unbolting seats but putting less fuel in each stop does have an impact and yes brimming the tank could cut down on the amount of stops I make but would probably increase my price per mile

If I pay 1p a mile more because of carrying extra weight and cover an average 12,000 miles a year it equates to £120 more in motoring costs. And you can do a lot with £120 ;)


It's nowhere near 1p a mile though. Probably not even a 10th of that :)
 
It's nowhere near 1p a mile though. Probably not even a 10th of that :)

Also its not a static weight difference, if you were running brim to fuel light, there will be points when the car is lighter than if you were topping up regularly..

Having said this I couldn't short fill for the simple reason my fuel gauge is utter trash. The first half a tank lasts between 180 and 210 miles, the second half lasts between 100 and 140 miles. Then the fuel light comes on, which means 10 litres of stated capacity left but gauges show absolutely nothing which is very unnerving. It should do 400 miles on a 45 litre tank if I just said sod it I'm going to based on 41mpg which is what I get in summer however you'd probably see the fuel light at 320 miles and that makes me twitchy going that far when all the gauges say "Oy your gonna stop very soon".
 
It's nowhere near 1p a mile though. Probably not even a 10th of that :)
:yeahthat:
Despite my best efforts to do so, the difference in mpg when carrying a passenger is too small for me to reliably measure - and a passenger weighs significantly more than half a tank of fuel.
 
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