Cost of Fuel how far to travel

Garydmayn

Hi first time posting a thread, hope this is the rght place!

Anyway my question is how far can you travel to buy cheaper fuel before the distance outways the saving?
I am not good at converting from metric to imperial but I wonder if anyone out there is clever enough to work this out.

My car (I know its selfish but we have to start somewhere) is a diesel and does about 45-50 miles to the gallon. How far can I travel and still save money if the saving is 1p, 2p,3p etc cheaper per litre of fuel?

If somebody can do this perhaps Martin will put the results on his main page for everyone

Crabman

Garydmayn wrote:

Hi first time posting a thread, hope this is the rght place!

Anyway my question is how far can you travel to buy cheaper fuel before the distance outways the saving?
I am not good at converting from metric to imperial but I wonder if anyone out there is clever enough to work this out.

My car (I know its selfish but we have to start somewhere) is a diesel and does about 45-50 miles to the gallon. How far can I travel and still save money if the saving is 1p, 2p,3p etc cheaper per litre of fuel?

If somebody can do this perhaps Martin will put the results on his main page for everyone

Welcome to MSE :T

If you can work out how far the station is and use that to work out the saving, you can then compare costs.

Let's start with a visit to www.petrolprices.com - check your area by registering and typing your postcode (they send you alerts of price changes via email, it's free) and then find out where your cheapest petrol station is and the distance from you.

Post those results and we can go from there...

geo555

With a car doing 45 to the gallon, it works out at 10p a mile. Assuming an empty tank will take 10 gallons (45 litres) a 1p difference per litre will be 45p so you could drive an extra 2 miles to the cheaper garage. Rember you have to drive back as well.

Garydmayn

makes sense now, cann't believe I didn't see it that way before

Cheers!

moonrakerz

geo555 wrote:

With a car doing 45 to the gallon, it works out at 10p a mile. Assuming an empty tank will take 10 gallons (45 litres) a 1p difference per litre will be 45p so you could drive an extra 2 miles to the cheaper garage. Rember you have to drive back as well.

If you take ALL the costs into account, fuel, insurance, road tax, maintenance, depreciation etc, etc, it's probably about 40p a mile !

grumbler

moonrakerz wrote:

If you take ALL the costs into account, fuel, insurance, road tax, maintenance, depreciation etc, etc, it's probably about 40p a mile !

It is absolutely incorrect to take 'insurance, tax, ... etc, etc' into account in this case. I agree about maintanance and depreciation though. However, not total depreciation, but only part of it that depends on milage.

scheming_gypsy

so in other words it's a waste of time really is what you're saying as your 40p saving is eaten up in petrol used.

tomstickland

If you take ALL the costs into account, fuel, insurance, road tax, maintenance, depreciation etc, etc, it's probably about 40p a mile !

Yes, but insurance, road tax and depreciation are constants, so the more miles you do the less per mile they cost.

Off the top of my head, car holds 10 gallons, which is 45 litres, say petrol is 2p cheaper at another garage, then that's a 90p saving. Working on 30 miles per gallon and 95p per litre then:
miles per pound = miles per gallon / (litres per gallon * £perlitre)
that's around 7 miles per pound, which is 14p per mile.

So 90p allows you 6 miles.

ie: 2p allows 6 miles
so around 3 miles per 1p of saving.

moonrakerz

tomstickland wrote:

Yes, but insurance, road tax and depreciation are constants, so the more miles you do the less per mile they cost.

Agree - but that doesn't mean that they don't exist, on that sort of logic, the further you drive the more you save !

Could I refer you to the AA website ?

http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_petrol_table.jsp