Gas Saving Tip #1
[ June 25th, 2008 ] By: Charles Smith Posted in » Tips and Tricks
With people so concerned over the price of gasoline I will post gas saving tips, no matter how strange and minute they may be. Today’s gas saving tip is Fill Up When It Is Colder.
That means, since it is summer now, fill up late at night or on cooler days. Why? Because a gallon of gasoline is a volume not a mass. Higher temperatures of gasoline means less mass per dollar when compared to the same price at a lower temperature. While the effect of this is small, it could make a difference in the long term.
The effect of temperature is not minute enough to scrape by the law books. Most states (probably all) have laws related to the sale of bulk volumes of liquid, especially gasoline. They have to be sold as the volume they would fill at a defined temperature. For example, in Arizona all bulk sales have to be sold as the volume they would be at 60ºF. So, during the summer, a gasoline truck actually carries less gasoline than it does during the winter even though they are carrying the same volume. By the way, Arizona is WAYYYYYYYYYYY hotter than 60ºF during the summer, so people at the pump are losing a good amount of mass per gallon.
Also, when it is hot out, gasoline likes to evaporate faster. So you could be losing some mass to evaporation before it even gets into your gas tank.
Recap: Fill up when it is coldest (at night).
June 25th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The change in the density of Gasoline due to temperature in the underground tanks is so small that this is really a minute tip. Also I have heard of some stations who put flow restricters on their pumps. The pumps are designed to pump x amount of fuel per minute and old pumps esp measure the time to calculate the gallons pumped. So these stations decreased the flow without resetting the gallons per second resulting in less gallons pumped at the usual rate.
a few around here got shut down for that a few weeks ago.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Wow. That is pretty low down to steal from customers.
Yea, the change in volume isnt huge and most pumps change things for certain temperatures, but a lot of them are set for 80′F on 100′F days. Every little bit counts :)
June 25th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
That really is pretty bad :-/
In addition, I bet flow is reduced when multiple people are pumping at once, so maybe in addition to filling up when it’s cold out, fill when it’s empty. (pun not intended)
4AM GAS RUNS YEAH!
June 27th, 2008 at 3:05 am
4am gas runs?
Nothing better than topping off when I’m tanked!
(pun intended)