So just out of curiosity, how many miles can you go on one tank of gas?

My lil Chevy Aveo costs right around $40 for a fill up (about $38 actually) but I can only go about 280 miles on that since it's a small tank. So, I'm curious...

Not to make everyone hate me, but I filled up the tank of my motorcycle today (at $3.98/gallon) and recorded a record best 73 mpg for all in-city driving. :D

I usually get about 18-20 miles per gallon which is actually pretty good considering I have one of those "evil" SUVs (Tahoe.) But I think right now I am not getting that since it runs close to 100 in the day here right now, so the AC is always cranked up when I am driving. So on a 25 gallon tank (I think my tank is 25 gallons) I should be getting about a 450-500 mile range.

Still, I seem better off than many. A guy I know has a massive Dodge truck that gets about 8 miles to the gallon- and it is diesel too.

This cash vs. credit thing is getting out of control. I'm going to have to start actually carrying cash on me. I usually don't carry more than $20, but today I filled up at $4.17 because I didn't have cash and my usual station moved to the cash vs credit thing. I would have paid $4.05 if I'd had cash. The guy at this station knows me because I'm in there almost every day and I asked him when that started. He said on Thursday. Then he asked me if it was good or bad. I told him it was bad because 1) I never know how much it's going to be to fill it up and 2) I never carry that much cash on me. I didn't mention that it's a pain to go in, stand in line to pay first, then go pump and then go back in to pay again. The question is, is it worth $1.20. (12 cents times about 10 gallons of gas). That's the big question. Is it worth $1.20? Hmmm.

DH filled me up for just $3.85 yesterday! He had to pay cash, tho - was also about .12 more for credit. In NJ we cannot pump our own, and DH loves to have cash on him, so no problem there. Me, I never have any cash on me!

I started carpooling to work last week and my coworker drove. I hadn't had to fill up in over a week - what a great feeling! Office is about 20 miles away, so carpooling 3 days really helps.

Cash vs. credit thing
 

I've heard about it both on radio & the news... but I can't tell if it's affecting the gas stations that I go to. Can someone please explain how it works?

e.g. - I walk up to the pump, the little digital reads above the grade levels read 3.89, 3.99, 4.10 for regular, plus, premium. If I swipe my credit card, is the digial read supposed to change to say 3.99, 4.09, 4.20 if there is a credit surcharge? Or does it stay the same and my card is just charged more?

And can someone explain to me why convienence stores are adding this charge BY THE GALLON? That doesn't seem to make sense to me. I thought the CC-companies charged a flat rate to the store per transation for "using the CC service". Is that not how it works?

And if this is such a huge burden (I can see how it can be for small locally owned stored hence some places that say you can only use a credit card for purchases over $X), why don't they charge EVERY transaction the store makes (random soda/beer/candy/chip purchaces) and not just the gas expenses?

I could be wrong, but I was told (don't know where) that it is illegal to directly pass on the flat fee that credit card companies charge per transaction. I do NOT understand why it's ok to do it this way though. Some are being charged much more than the flat fee if they have a big gas tank.

$3.91 at our Safeway store today.

It was $3.87 last week.

Credit card fees from a merchant to the credit card company are structured as a base transaction fee plus a percentage of the total sale. This is why many stores require a minimum purchase of a few dollars for you to use a credit card.

It varies by card, but generally speaking the basic fee is 29 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the total charge. For volume sales- at levels that would apply for your average gas station- the fees go down, but not much. For moderate volume, 2.3-2.5% of the total charge is common with a 25-28 cent fee per transaction.

As for how the cash discount works- it is legal to offer a discount off advertised prices for certain forms of payment, but it is illegal to charge an additional fee for certain forms of payment. The end result is the same, but how you go about it is what matters.

If you want to charge $4.00 a gallon for gas and actually get that amount after fees on customers who use credit cards; it would be legal to charge $4.05 per gallon and offer a 5 cent discount per gallon for cash, but illegal to charge $4.00 per gallon and charge an extra 5 cents per gallon for credit card purchases.

As for the random soda etc. purchases you reference, that is not quite such an issue for a great number of reasons. Point being- the markup and real profit is in non-gas items. So credit card fees do not matter so much.

Think about it like this, when was the last time you saw a gas station that only sold gas and did not have a food mart or mechanical repair services? Gas-only stations don't exist anymore since there is not sustainable profit in selling only gasoline.

Bush to lift symbolic offshore oil ban
Posted: 10:19 AM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush will announce Monday he is lifting an executive ban on offshore oil drilling, the White House said.The move is largely symbolic because there is also a federal law banning offshore oil drilling. Bush has been pushing Congress to repeal the law passed in 1981.
Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, signed the executive order in 1990.

Besides the law, there is also a matter of production equipment.
Or lack of it.
The ships that are used, that are needed for deep sea exploration and drilling do not currently exist. The ones that do are in use and new ones are still in dock yards in China being built.

Than there is the matter of once the oil is found and drilled, where does it go?
Companies can sell it anywhere they wish to, just because it is found off of US does it mean that it will go to US market.

And where ever it does go, what about the refineries?

Are there any more of them being built?

List could go on further but as OP said, this is all rather largely symbolic.

FYI:
1958: Gas was .30
2008: Gas over $4.00
Per AutoWeek as part of their 50th anniversary issue.

There is one gas station in my area that is always 10 cents cheaper than everywhere else, so filled up at $3.93 yesterday.

Cool website: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1958.htm

1958: Average Income: $4,650.00
2006 (most recent I could find): $48201.00

EE-BO, thanks for the explanation

Re: offshore drilling, Bush is a moron to think this is going to solve the problem. It's a temporary solution to a very permanent problem. All environmental reasons aside, it is just delaying the inevitable. This isn't going to decrease our dependance on oil and if he thinks oil is the only thing affecting the economy he's a lot dumber than I thought.

Nobody is looking at this as something that will be responsible for solving the problem. It's something that can and will help out. We will always have a dependence on oil so long as there are no viable alternatives. Thankfully, those are heavily in the works. In the meantime, being able to produce more domestic oil will alleviate some stress for many and absolutely alleviate some of our dependance on foreign crude. Lucky for us, this "temporary solution" is one that could be effective for many, many decades.