I top off to maximize the buffer I have before I need to buy gas again. I know in practical terms it probably doensn’t matter if I can squeeze out another quart of gas but it’s just a habit I have.
Indeed. A $5 bill is a fin.
I don’t top off. I figure that since I’m usually at the same station, if I stop filling when the hose clicks off every time, I’ll get the same full tank, making calculating MPG more consistent.
But really, what I came here to post was the Jerry Seinfeld Amex Commercial when using a credit card was quite unusual. It still makes me laugh.
I think you mean pay at the pump was new then. Gas stations have been taking credit cards as long as credit cards have been around.
Once I was in northern Minnesota. I stopped for gas at a rural station where a lightning strike had taken out the telephone, but they still had power. Cash registers worked, as did the gas pumps, but they couldn’t take credit cards. There were half a dozen people without cash, waiting, I guess, for the telephone to be restored. I always have cash on me, especially when I travel, because for any number of reasons sometimes cash works better.
That being said, I’d guess that 99% of my expenses are charged to credit cards or electronically transferred from bank accounts. And I never top up the tank.
I never top off but then again I wasn’t alive during the carter administration.
When I open my gas cap, I can see part-way into the gas tank. The ‘filler pipe’ is only a couple inches. I stick the nozzle into the pipe and push so the springy sleeve compresses – otherwise the machine thinks there’s no vapor seal and it won’t start pumping fuel when I squeeze the trigger on the handle. That’s California for you!
There’s some kind of float-valve (or something like that) inside the filler nozzle. When the gas in the tank gets high enough, the floaty thing stops the gas flow and the trigger on the handle goes ‘tunk’ as it releases. So I partially pull the nozzle out and I can look down into the gas tank and see that the fuel isn’t at the bottom of the filler pipe, much less at the top of the tank. So I make a C shape with my thumb and forefinger and use it to make the springy sleeve compress – yes, I’m defeating the vapor-seal mechanism. Now I can watch the gas flow into my tank when I’m squeezing the trigger on the handle again. I usually pump the fuel for another two to three seconds before it reaches the bottom of the filler pipe. Then I stop. That’s about a quart of fuel or, with my mileage, about 15 extra miles of travel.
And, just for good measure, I tap the end of the nozzle inside the filler pipe, just to force an extra drop or two of fuel to fall. That part I do to make sure those extra drops aren’t hitting my paint job, not to add a couple extra feet to the tank’s travel. I close my gas cap before hanging the filler nozzle back on the machine – no sense letting the vapors escape my tank on a hot day; I paid for those vapors! :dubious:
I’m on a motorcycle.
–G!
I’ll be honest–when it’s close, I just do it because I find it fun to get an exact amount. Otherwise I don’t bother.
It also just interests me just how much extra you can fit in, but I can’t test that as I don’t want to go over.
Same here but I never had to use cash for purchases not normally requiring it* in decades. Big difference IMO quibbling over whether to carry cash v. paying often with cash. I do the first, not the second. The second is leaving credit card cash back on the table, given that my use/non-use of CC has zero impact on CC charges to merchants reflected in retail prices, and I never spend beyond my means or carry a CC balance. If other people do that’s their problem.
An analogy might be flat tires. I’ve never had one a true flat in 40+ yrs of driving (somebody let the air out of a tire a couple of times without damaging it). However I look askance at some cars now offered with non-runflat tires and no spare. Runflats are one whole debate, but some models now actually come with conventional tires and no spare, not a tiny spare, none, just a can of tire goop and a 12V compressor.
*I mean not counting a few restaurants and service providers I frequent who I know only take cash, I mean places that normally take CC but for some reason can’t right now and there’s no other provider who can.
True. My father told about how when he was a starving college student on the GI Bill after WWII he and mom occasionally would buy a tank of gas on credit* so they could drive from LA to Santa Barbara and eat at his in-laws’ rather than buy food with the cash they did not have.
*This was probably a gas company credit card rather than a bank card, but it was credit.