A $110 Gas Receipt

Yeah, that’s a receipt for $110. For a tank of gas. One tank of gas.

Earlier in the year we bought a used Ford Excursion to fit the needs of my growing family, and it’s a beast. Yes, we needed something that big. It’s bigger than the short bus. That’s 7190 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal (or 3 1/2 tons, if that sounds more impressive), with 10 power pumping pistons generating 310 hp and about 12 mpg, being fed from a 44 gallon fuel tank. It’s a Beast.

And when the Beast’s 44 gallon belly gets hungry, you have to feed it. Unfortunately, I’m not able to feed it Ramen noodles.

A lot of gas stations put limits on the amount you can charge to a card when filling up at the pump.

I’ve hit a $50 limit; that’s no big whup for someone who owns 3 SUV’s.

I’ve hit the $75 dollar limit once, and that’s not chump change.

But I actually hit the $100 limit twice, even before I hit the smaller dollar value limits. The first time, the attendant looked a little confused, then a little scared, when he came back to finish pumping (full service gas stations are the law in New Jersey, where I usually fill up). I think he was afraid that I might fly off the handle if he came back to me with a $100 tab. This is New Jersey, and there’s certainly some attitude/road rage stereotypes for this area of the country. I’ve probably even contributed to those stereotypes at some point. But even though it was the first time I was paying that much to fill up a vehicle, and one of the first times for me filling up this vehicle, I didn’t give him a hard time about it. It certainly was not his fault. We shared a chuckle about it and then I gas-guzzled my way home.

But the big bill came yesterday on my way home. I stopped at a gas station that I hadn’t stopped at in awhile, and certainly one that I hadn’t filled up the Beast before. I pulled in with a lit gas light and a credit card handy. I expected that I would hit the $100 dollar limit again, or one of the other dollar amounts. I didn’t care, I just wanted to top off with as much as I could and get on home. I told the attendant to “fill it up.”

I sat in the Beast for awhile, reading a newspaper clipping about giant prehistoric devil-scorpions, even though I had read it a few days before on the internet (ain’t it great how fast old media moves?). I knew I needed to kill some time because it was going to take awhile to fill this sucker up, and I think giant prehistoric devil-scorpions are pretty cool. Not that I’d want to run across one, mind you. Once I was done reading, I turned around to look at the pump, and I was only at about $60. I had a ways to go. I figured the $50 and $100 limits to card purchases were the most common, for whatever reason. So if I’ve passed $50, I’ll most likely have to wait for the $100 limit.
I waited, and I waited. I kept turning around to see how high this was going. I think the pump was pumping slowly. Other cars came, filled up, and left. A long line was forming behind me. When the pump passed the $100 dollar mark, I was like, “whoah…”

The pump stopped on it’s own just shy of a flat $110. The attendant, who kept coming back to check to see if I was done, topped me off at an even $110. Just a little less than 40 gallons. How nice. He came to the window for my card, and said, “one-ten” ($110). I handed him my card, thinking, yeah, great.

The bad part of all this is that I actually got a cheap price for the gas at $2.85 a gallon (which is really $2.86 a gallon, since they sneak that $.009 in there on the price to make you think gas is just a tad cheaper that it really is). That’s some of the cheapest gas in the country right now. I passed several gas stations at $2.90+ a gallon, and gas in Pennsylvania is well over $3 a gallon. If I’d paid the national average of aout $3.08 a gallon, the bill would have been a whopping $123! In some of the most expensive parts of the country for gas, like around $3.20 a gallon, the price would have been $128.

I think I’ll walk to work tomorrow if I have to. :)

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