Best Prices for Gas on I-95
I’ve lived in the DC area for the past few years and spent four years in college in Maryland. I know the drive on I-95 between DC and Philly pretty well. I’ve stopped at most of the rest areas at least once. In my ongoing quest for the cheapest gas, I’ve learned a few more things I wanted to pass along.
1) Don’t be a gas snob. Exit 100 in a town called North East, MD, has a Flying J truck stop. It’s a little bit off the beaten path but it usually has gas for a good price. It’s not a Shell, Exxon or BP, but gas is gas. Buy it where it’s cheap. If I’m running low before I hit the DE border, this is usually the place with the best price.
2) Know what the gas taxes are like. Generally speaking, people think MD has high taxes on stuff, and the same is true for gas. Unless I am going to a cheap section of Baltimore, I rarely find gas cheaper in Charm City than in DC. Delaware, being an income-tax free state has low consumption taxes on everything, including gasoline. Therefore, I usually stop there for gas. Now here’s the fun part…
Last Saturday I left with a half tank. For some reason, my mileage took a plummet recently and I knew I’d have to tank up somewhere along the way. There is one rest stop in the middle of I-95 in Delaware. As you head north, it’s on the left side. (Actually, it’s also on the left when you head south too.) There are TWO stations at this rest stop, one at the south end and one at the north end. For some reason, these two stations are always priced differently. Due to this price differential, I always play gas arbitrage. The trick for me is to leave DC with as little gas as possible as required for my trip.
When I got to DE, I saw the south end Exxon station $2.39 and was really happy. When I left, my local stations had it for no less than $2.42, most places in DC had it for more than $2.55! I filled up. What a great price! Well, what killed me was driving past the second station on the north end and seeing that it was $2.35. Grrr. I could have saved about 48 cents more if I saw the other station’s price. I made a mental note to stop at the north end station on the way back down. So when I returned south on Sunday, I topped off and got a quarter tank of gas at the north end station for $2.37. When I arrived home, gas was still around$ 2.43, so I made out well and saved around a 70 cents overall.
I must not be the only driver that knows this because that station almost always has a line of cars waiting there.
Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge / Rhinebeck Trip Tally wrote:
[…] side trip to Staten Island and that would have put me close to empty I think. Safer to buy some in DE at my favorite rest stop, however, I should have driven to the south end because there was a price difference […]
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 8:28 am | Permalink