BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cars What are you doing about high gas prices?

I just took a 10 hour ride, over 500 miles, on my motorcycle and spent less about $60. Worked out well. The manufacturers are cutting back on pick up truck production because consumers are not buying. Unforutnately, I don't believe that gasoline will ever get back to what we were used to. We are now caught up with the rest of the world.

I try not to drive anymore unless I have to, like to the grocery store or something. I take the train to work now and walk to the office from there. I have been traveling on the weekends lately and have to drive - filling up the tank has been $75-$80 a trip! It is funny though because I have noticed that there will be two gas stations close to one another and one will be 10-12 cents more expensive per gallon - I try to find the cheapest one around and save where I can. I think investing in a GPS that has the daily fuel price service on it is a good idea - it will tell you the prices at the gas stations around you. I know the new TomTom ONE 130S and XL 330S models have this option and it can help save! These prices have to go down!!

if the gas prise goes more than $6 per gallon.I will stop using my car. And use a good solar vehicle. So that i can save my gas prise and use ones or tries a week.
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joel
Drug Rehab Center
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Using solar vehicles is a good idea. motor - bikes with chargeable batteries are also available. How about that.

However now a day's I am using my car only for long journey.

I really wish I lived in a city with a good public transportation system or that things were close enough to ride a bike. Arlington, TX is a huge city, both area wise and population wise. However, they never did put in any public transportation-not a bus in sight!

My husband got rid of his big truck months ago and now drives a GEO Metro. He's going to talk to his boss about telecommutting.

I work at home but I do now combine all my trips, instead of running to a store every time I might need something. I got to exercise class every Tue and Thurs and so do my errands on those days.

There was a news story about it NOT being practical to trade your vehicle in for a smaller model. They are basing it on paying for more insurance each month with a newer vehicle and then the payments for the vehicle, does not make it financially conducive for the little bit of better fuel economy you will get.

I have a 93 Chrysler Town and Country Mini-van. When I fill it up so it goes past the full mark, I can go about 135 miles before I lose my first full bar. There are four bars on the gage for each quarter tank of gas and then if I stay around 65 - 67 mph, I will average about 23 miles a gallon on the highway. Obviously more if I go slower but with the highway speed limit being 70 in Michigan, its hard to stay at 65. lol.



Usually, the more expensive one is the station that gets their gas from a foreign country.

The public transportation in LA isn't bad. I catch the train more than the bus. Prices are different in each area I go. The highest I've seen was in Arcadia, Ca for $4.99 for regular. That was about a week ago. It may be higher since then.

I know people hate me when I say this but I think higher priced gas is a good thing. Overall I drive slower, in an economy car and I take my time. I notice that other cars around me are driving slower. Hopefully our consumption as well as traffic accidents and deaths will decline, giving us cleaner air, slowing the rate of Global Warming and sending a message to big oil that we can cope. I can't wait till it hits $6 a gallon, no profanity please.

As you can see by the other posts here all of the people that responded are changing their habits somewhat and that is a very good thing. I went to Starbucks and asked how gas prices have hurt their business, they said that they have been just as busy as ever.

So I guess people will complain about paying $4.50 for a gallon of gas but they don't mind paying $80 a gallon for coffee, now U go figure...

The price of gas affects the cost of everything. I paid $5.00 for a gallon of milk the other day! We've limited our travel, stay at home and only go out to eat maybe once a month. The F250 is parked as it only gets 9 miles to the gallon (it's an '88). The Caddi only sees the road about once a week when I go to town for groceries and I try to get all my running done on that day. Hubby drives the MDX back and forth to work (we live way out in the country and there's no carpooling here). We don't limit the ac in the vehicles because we're old, fat and can't take the heat (it's around 90 here everyday). The ac in the house doesn't go below 74 and we make sure all the lights and everything else is turned off when we're done with them. Yes, we've changed a few things and we're finding it very inconvenient, but what else can we do?
Oh, I just have to reply to one quote.....
"Usually, the more expensive one is the station that gets their gas from a foreign country."
Most oil is shipped here and refined here, it all costs the same. Gas prices are set by the individual companies that own the stations and convenience stores. BP gets the same gas as Texaco does (I used to work at a convenience store and watched the BP gas truck go across the road to unload fuel at the Texaco station). It's all from the same place, the only difference is the name of the station or company. Futures Traders are the ones that set the gas prices by speculating at the stock exchange and raising the prices on oil so that they can sell at a higher price and OPEC has control of how much oil is released. We can blame our own government for the hike in gas prices. As long as they keep refusing to lift the ban on drilling for oil offshore and other places, then the cost is going to keep skyrocketing. We'll be paying 6 bucks a gallon by the end of the year.

It is difficult to know exactly where our oil comes from because it is bought on the commodities exchange we don't call up and buy it from individual countries. In researching this I have found that it depends on who you ask and who you want to believe, basically tho once bought we look for the cheapest, fastest shipping cost and it just costs less to ship from a local source.

So what I have found is that about 40% of our oil is domestic and 60% is imported, with 35% of imported oil coming from Canada and Mexico our biggest suppliers.
Most of the remainder of imported oil comes from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela after that is Nigeria at about 7.5%. OPEC does not control how much oil is released although they have tried, OPEC is a group of 12 member nations, Canada and Mexico are not OPEC members they do what is in their best interests and do not do OPEC's bidding, only about 20 or 30% of our oil imports come from OPEC member nations. This is not to suggest that OPECs effects on the world's oil supply is not significant, it certainly is.

As to local costs, often if one oil company has extra supply or refined product, like gas or diesel, they will sell to another brand that has a short fall. So at Exxon/Mobil you could be pumping gas from a Shell or an Arco/BP refinery. The price might vary because they didn't refine it themselves. These are publicly traded companies so their balance sheets are open to the public but they can charge whatever they want. Futures trading effects the price of all bulk materials, like oil, pork, corn, soybeans, etc. and I'm sure that they wish that they could control world oil prices but that would be a violation of our SEC laws. No person or group of people sets the oil prices the price fluctuates depending on how much there is and the demand for it. Many, many factors effect world oil prices our weak economy is one of them, Ours and China's huge demands another. The list is very, very long, you could write a book about it...

I think that importing oil is a great idea, since we can save what we have in case of a world crisis or sudden embargo. Lets use theirs up first and save ours so we can flip them all the bird later if we have to.....