Start saving for gas money for this summer

Well it looks like it will be another year of sucking us dry due to the love and passion we have for this sport (that unfortunately requires so much of this commodity)

i read this on yahoo today [http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060411/summer_gasoline.html?.v=12]

another summer of high gas prices, yippeeee!

Yeah, I'm predicting that it'll be $3/gallon before June here in Tampa. It's already at $2.75. 30 days ago it was $2.13... insane. Record earnings for the oil execs... everyone else takes it in the pants.

plus is at about $2.70 here a month ago it was $2.10

Hey do you think they'll start putting E85 engines in boats since they are already doing it on a lot of the GM vehicles? I don't know all the ins and outs of E85 but i'm sure it's mass production would eliminate some of our dependancy on oil rich nations.

FANTASTIC! Should be a fun summer. 40gal. @ 2.99= $120.

It is also great that the companies haven't caught up yet and there are still dollar cutoffs on credit cards at a few stations. If you hit one accidentally and get cutoff at $75 you have to wait for a gas man to come over and rerun and restart it. (In Oregon we are not allowed to pump our own gas). Its even better when you get cutoff once on the truck and once on the boat.
Four different times last summer my credit card company called me on the road asking about suspicious use on my cards at gas stations within ten minutes. I appreciate them doing it but it is ridiculous.

BTW don't take out your frustration on station owners/staff. They are making less money with higher prices because cc companies charge them a percentage of sales so they pay more fees as prices increase but their margins don't increase.

PS- Exxon Mobil's NYSE ticker XOM
Chevron CVX
At least get some of your money back.

hey fitz, so i just got a big tow vehicle that will probably put me over the limit at the pump

how do you get around that? my boat tank isn't that big, but i'm guessing my new 32 gallon tank in the tow vehicle will and i dont' want to spend an hour at the pump either.

Enjoy it! $3 will be cheap in a few years.

Gas prices are at record highs because price per barrel is at a records high, yet all oil companies had record setting profits this year...

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm............

(Message edited by zacky on April 11, 2006)

Not all stations have cutoffs. I ran into them at Costco, 76 stations, and a couple of Shells last summer. I tend to gas at Chevron if I can find one and don't recall getting cutoff there last summer.

As far as how to avoid it, carry cash I guess. It shouldn't be anywhere near as big of deal in WA as you can just rerun your card immediately if you get cutoff and start pumping again but in OR the pumps need a code to even enter a cc so the attendants have to do it and if they're swamped and I'm in a hurry (patience is something I need work on!) it can get frustrating in a big hurry.

Summer gas usage estimates:
April: 30 gal
May: 60 gal
June: 120 gal
July: 120 gal
July: 120 gal
August: 120 gal
Sept: 90 gal
Oct: 60 gal

Total: 600 gal x $3/gal = $1,800

I think I previously posted on this site that I never ask for gas. Let me rephrase that: this summer, I will be asking for gas and I won't feel bad about it.

Tips to deal:
1. Don't buy a new board this season just to have a '06-board shops reading this will hate me for that one.
2. Easy on the boat bling.
3. Drink your local brewery's beer-no imports-Yuengling for me in PA.
4. Break out the wakeskate more often to cut down riding time with ballast.
5. F*** it, you only live once, at least the stock market has been rockin'.

Bird - i wouldn't be suprised if we started seeing E85 engines offered in new boats. I'm researching this E85 thing this morning and discovered that older regular gas engines can be converted to E85. and once converted, they can run on any combination of ethanol and gas. Just not sure if gov't would allow the mass conversion to E85.
1. Demand would immediately skyrocket, which would make the price of E85 do the same.
2. Our US auto industry could use some stimulation.
end of model year 06, there is estimated 6 million cars w/ flexible fuel options. Im certain boat man'fctrs will follow

Were easily over $3.00 at a lot of stations in San Francisco right now... Out in the Delta area most are running in the high $2 range ( 2.85-2.95) already and we are 2 mos before Memorial Day.

We will be easily looking at $4.00 + on the water come memorial day

(Message edited by lzyboy on April 11, 2006)

100% ethanol=$4/gallon price is cheaper because gov. subsidises(sp?) so farmers can sell more corn.


using e85 usuall results in a 15-25% decrease in fuel econ. it is a wash cheaper gas but ya use more. It also has its fair share of problems that i see every day.

Tampa... Anyone know anyone riding in Tampa... Let me know

spoon - e85 has more oxygen in it than gas, prob burns hotter. what problems are created? curious..

usually mixed with 15% gas, hence the 85. do the vehicles you see have the proper conversion process? maybe it acts up under compression or something...

use of ethanol is supposed to increase the value of corn by 25-50 cents/bushel. surprised to hear its still subsidized...

the nice thing about using ethanol is we already have it (or the land to grow it on). at the rate our dependence is growing on foreign oil and climbing political unrest gas could get outrageous. talk about erosion control. just curious about some real-life application

fox - unfortunately this country doesnt' seem to understand the concept of consuming less


(Message edited by denverd1 on April 11, 2006)

Ethanol was going for 2.70/gal today since everyone is supposed to replace MTBE in fuel with it. So that really isn't a viable alternative at this point for lowering fuel costs. The problem isn't lack/demand on oil...its lack of refining capability in the US. The government (EPA) has made building new refineries a hugely complicated, time consuming job. Whether this was to appease the oil tycoons or the tree hugging sorts we may never know. One sure fire way to bring the cost down is to use less.

Nacho I work on fuel injected car/trucks designed to run on e85 or gas at a new car dealer. E85 vaporizes at a much lower making vapor lock a real problem gm has pretty much solved this problem with much higher fuel pressure, ford and chrysler are yet to follow. It takes a much hotter spark and more fuel to get them going in the cold, probably would not be a problem in boats. Also o2 sensors do not seem to hold up to e85 use as well as gas, as with cat. converters also not a problem in boats. The big issue with use in boats is the reduced power/extra consumpton along with vapor locking.


eric sorry 2.75$/gal plus federal and state taxes and distribution is how I got to 4$

Spoon - the o2 sensor issue is pretty odd, as from what I understand its pretty important when running ethanol or some mix of it. anyone addressing that yet?

would glow plug solve the temperature issue? also odd, as the midwest is where all this is being tested - not the warmest of climates.

may be a while before this becomes a reality at least in our boats. thanks for you help

(Message edited by denverd1 on April 11, 2006)

I don't know if you've seen the email yet, don't buy Exxon or Mobile gas, if enough people stop buying their gas, they in turn will have to lower prices which will cause the other companies to follow suit, consumers can control the market but this will take a group effort

I hate to be a pessimist but this is what I project will happen. Ethanol by law will replace MTBE this summer as a fuel additive (fact), this will decrease the fuel mileage slightly in our vehicles and boats. Like crude oil currently the U.S. also has an Ethanol refining capacity issue, we grow enough corn but may not be able to refine enough of it in time to meet the new demand. Ethanol has to be trucked in from the Midwest therefore this will further raise refining costs and the price per barrel will easily peek 70 bucks. The projected price this summer per several local commodities traders that attend night school with me project a pump price of at least 3.50 for premium and all this is without another major hurricane. US refining capacity is still not back to where it was before the hurricanes hit last summer. If we have another heavy hurricane year that forces temporary plant shut-downs or major damage premium will most likely see $4 a gallon. I generally enjoy being right but I really hope I am wrong on this one!

yea everyone thinks 2.50/3.00 is bad. truth is things could get really bad in terms of prices at the pump. You have to remember that rising prices are also a way to protect what little refining capacity we do have. I they didn't raise prices, and everyone took their summer vacation and slammed their boat then you would have shortages. Like gas stations not having any gas period.

On a more positive note, there are two companies that specialize in ethanol distribution and refining that are going public in the next few weeks. Hopefully the influx of capital will create some refining capacity for ethanol and aid establishing the distribution network without tampering w/ crude oil refineries

A short term solution to drive costs down to some degree would be to completely freeze out one vendor. It seems like if nobody bought anything from BP for a couple of weeks, they would drop their prices to some extent, the other gas stations would have to follow suit. Then everybody could shift and buy from them and freeze another company out. I know that they probably have rules as to how much you can actually lower prices. Just a thought (although there is probably some flaw in my logic).

Is it possible to convert a boat to propane? Although you would need a tank in the boat and they're pretty big. I'm from Canada and propane is around 50-60 cents cheaper a litre. That's why we got our truck running on it.

Well, I feel good about selling my Formula last summer and buying the MC, since the Formula had a 125 gal. tank! (125 X $2.99=$373.75!!!)

I don't miss those twin big blocks now!

The rich get richer!

Just a quick comparison for you all.

Driving to work this morning in Sydney, checked out the petrol prices, at the moment they are charging $1.339 per litre.

Quick conversion with the US/AUD exchange rate and litre to gallon.

Then the cost is $3.71 US per gallon. We wish we had petrol as cheap as you guys!!

29 gallons of diesel for my truck
@ $3.01 = $87.29
39 gallons of gas for the boat
@ $2.87 = $111.93

For a grand total of $199.22 for a trip to the river and back.....might be spending some time in the pool instead!

What about hybrid engines in the boat??

well if you can afford it buy a few barrels of gas during the time when gas prices are low save them for summer time...you might be spending around a 1000 dollars but come summer time you will save money from higher gas prices...

Summer gas usage estimates:
April: 30 gal
May: 60 gal
June: 120 gal
July: 120 gal
July: 120 gal
August: 120 gal
Sept: 90 gal
Oct: 60 gal

Total: 600 gal x $3/gal = $1,800

or buy 11 barrels 605 gal. at say 2.25 per gallon and spend 1361.00 roughly your save 439.00

but the most i've have ever stored is two barrels of race gas for motorcycles... i dont see storing that many barrels just doesn't seem that safe to me


(Message edited by buckettim on April 11, 2006)

Wow! Gonna be a long, expensive summer!

I am lucky that my crew is great about pitching in. I don't demand it, or ask for it, but I think everyone knows gas is going up. I have had several days where I was on the lake 10-12 hours, and have gone through a full tank (46 gal). At $3/gal, that is almost a $150 day. One day I had to pull the boat out and run to the gas station for more. Only once though. I put on over 300 hours/yr. I really don't want to total that up!

Tim, if you save your gas for extended periods then you need to factor in the cost of using an apporpraite amount of Stabil to keep the gas from going bad. A lot of times if you're going to keep the gas for more than a couple of months, adding Stabil will be more expensive than the increase in gas prices.

And this is a little late for a reply but I think it's important. Craig, not buying from Exxon or Mobil may put some service stations out of business but the companies themselves will just sell gas to which ever service station you are buying gas from. Everyone in the US could boycott Exxon and Mobil stations but at the end of the day, Exxon and Mobil will still be selling their gasoline to somebody. The only way to really stick it to the oil companies is to use less oil and drop these silly ideas like boycotting specific stations or everyone not buying gas on a particualr day.

propane is doable in a boat. back in the 90's a friend's parents owned a local propane refill store and sold grills and other junk. its nice because you can run it all day long and not have to refill and its runs a lot cooler. this was just a runabout so creating the torque needed for a fully ballasted boat may be a different issue.

hybrids will never work - not enough torque or horsepower and you lose a lot the charging capabilities found on a hybrid car.

and this boycott idea or the "don't buy gas on Thursday April 13" is just plain silly. ethanol isn't perfect either - can't pipeline anywhere. has to be in tanker

Heads Up on the barell / stock piling idea:

Gasoline looses approx 1 octane rating every 3-4 weeks so make sure you by 92 if you gonna buy in bulk...

True but i am use to buying 112 for my dirt bike and i would go thru a drum a month. so i didn't worry about a loss of octane....just an idea didn't know what would happen to gas if you stored it for that long...

dude, you went through 55 gallons of gas a month for a dirtbike? How often do you freaking ride? You have to almost kill yourself to burn 5 gallons of gas a day. When I was racing and riding 3 or 4 days a week I didn't come anywhere near that much.

----------I don't know if you've seen the email yet, don't buy Exxon or Mobile gas, if enough people stop buying their gas, they in turn will have to lower prices which will cause the other companies to follow suit, consumers can control the market but this will take a group effort--------------

It won't work...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

well i rode at my friends track about 3 to 4 times a week but i would go thru about 5 to 6 gallons a week with racing, but others always ended up dipping into my supply so it just goes pretty fast

I look at it this way, we only have 5-6 months of riding in NJ, so I make the most of it with family and friends. We launch right where we ride, no time wasted getting somewhere.

Even at $1.00 more per gallon this year (hopefully not that much) A whole day of riding will cost about $40-50 more than last year.
Split that up among your crew and it's cheap entertainment!

GRAMPS, nice! Yeah, we took like five days over Labor Day last year (remember the BIG spike then?) Paid $3.50 in Needles and even screwed up and bought some at the Havasu marina - $3.75. Anyhoo, it was like over three $hundies$ for fuel and we weren't really burning a ton on the lake. Is it wrong when you spend as much for fuel as you do for lodging a family? Tell you the truth, these prices will make it harder for me to go this year.

Wimper wimper... Im rooting for $6/gallon gas... then lets see who is crying. Gas his 3$ and everyone goes nuts... that aint jack!

I spent a couple of days riding at the lake and it cost me over $80 just to fill it back up. And it was just the 3 of us riding for 2-3 hours. Ouch. I wish I was rich like swerver.lol