Dealing with Rising Gas Prices

With gas prices rising, and no relief in sight, looking for ways to manage your transportation cost is just common sense. Whether it’s a drastic move like trading in your gas-guzzler for a hybrid vehicle, or adopting simple changes in habit like combining your errands into one trip, we can all benefit by evaluating our current routines and making some practical changes.

Conserving Gas

The federal government sponsors a website (www.fueleconomy.gov) that gives some fuel economy tips and estimates how it can affect your gas mileage. Putting just a few of these tips into practice could save you a couple of gallons of gas each week. Factor in the current cost of those two gallons of gas and multiply it by 52 weeks, and you’re looking at potential savings of hundreds of dollars each year! Here are just a few things to consider, and many won’t even cost a dime.

• Keep your tires properly inflated. Improperly inflated tires can decrease gas mileage by 3%.
• Choose the right car – Many families have more than one car these days. If you have more than one car to choose from, don’t take the eight passenger SUV if you’re just running to the store by yourself to get a gallon of milk.
• Combine errands – Better yet, don’t make a trip just to get that gallon of milk. Multiple short trips from cold starts can use almost twice as much gas as driving the same distance in one continuous trip with a warm engine. Try to combine your errands so you spend less time behind the wheel.
• Map your route – If you must travel to work on crowded rush hour highways that cause you to sit in traffic, look for less traveled side roads. Even if you have to travel a few miles farther, you may be in the car for less time.
• Empty your trunk – An extra 100 pounds, can decrease your gas mileage by 2%.
• Sticking to the speed limit – Speeding can decrease your gas mileage. Each 10 miles per hour over the speed limit can reduce your fuel economy by 15% to 20%.
• Avoid “jack-rabbit” starts and stops – Accelerating quickly from stops, can decrease your gas mileage by 5% or more.
• Use cruise control on longer trips - Cruise control can prevent unnecessary speed changes, improving fuel efficiency 10 -15%. Be careful on hilly terrain though, because cruise control can burn more gas while your car struggles to maintain a constant speed.
• Consider your air conditioning use – If you’re just driving around town, you probably burn more fuel using your A/C instead of rolling down the window, but for longer highway trips – don’t spare the air! Driving at higher speeds with the windows down greatly increases aerodynamic drag, which will increase fuel usage.
• Don’t use premium gas unless your car manual specifically calls for it – Even many cars that call for premium gas can run on lower grades, unless they experience knocking in the engine. If in doubt, check with your mechanic.
• Keep your car properly maintained – A properly tuned car can get up to 4% better fuel economy. Changing dirty or clogged air filters can improve gas mileage up to 10%. Fixing a major problem, like a faulty oxygen sensor can improve gas mileage by up to 40%!

Look for cheap gas

• Check local prices on sites like www.gasbuddy.com, or www.gaspricewatch.com
• Avoid buying gas on weekends
• Don’t buy gas near highway off-ramps
• But, don’t drive too far out of your way to find cheap gas

Look for alternative transportation

• Look into car-pooling – If you don’t know anyone going your direction, your local transportation department may be able to provide information on ride sharing.
• Investigate mass transportation and monthly passes - The American Public Transit Transportation Association has links to information about public transportation in your state.
• Can you walk to local destinations?
• Have you tried bicycling?
• In some metro areas you can “hitchhike” rides with people looking to take advantage of “High Occupancy Vehicle” (HOV) lanes.

Try telecommuting, or alternative work schedules

• Does your job lend itself to working from home? In many professions, as long as you have a phone and computer, you can get as much done from home, as you can from the office.
• If you have a long commute, is it possible for you to work four 10-hour days, instead of five 8-hour days? That alone, would cut your weekly commuting cost by 20%, not to mention saving wear and tear on your car and saving you time commuting each way.
• If you must commute to work, can you adjust your hours to come in early, and leave early in order to miss the rush hours? Idling and slow driving wastes a lot of fuel, so driving when few others are can save gas.

Evaluate your vehicle needs

The difference between a car that gets 20 MPG and one that gets 30 MPG amounts to $878 per year (assuming 15,000 miles of driving annually and an average fuel cost of $3.51).

• No matter how much fun your SUV, or high performance vehicle is, if it’s a gas guzzler, and you don’t have a need for its particular utility, you may want to consider switching vehicles. Be careful, some dealers have even stopped taking SUVs as trade-ins because there isn’t much demand for them. To compare the true cost of operating various vehicles, check out www.edmunds.com
• Before you buy your next new or used car, make sure it’s fuel-efficient. Visit www.fueleconomy.gov to research gas mileage estimates and other information on 1985-2008 model year cars.

For the foreseeable future, traveling is going to involve an expensive visit to the gas station for most of us. Follow some of the tips outlined above, and hopefully those visits will be a little less frequent.