Fuel Route planning - internet tools
 

Please forgive me if this has been covered in other posts. I did a search and I must not be hitting the right search terms.

I am wondering about internet tools for tracking fuel prices and methods you use to plan your routes and your fueling plan. Seems logical that if you know on your route that the price of fuel is 10 cents cheaper up the road or just across that state line that it would make sense to plan fuel stops at the cheapest places to fuel if possible.

So how do you plan for your fueling stops and stay abreast of the cheapest places to fuel and your route planning?

Longsnowsm

Try www.dieselboss.com. This website has the major chains listed and you can go directly to each chain's website for current fuel pricing. I have found it pretty accurate, for the most part. As far as routing is concerned, OOIDA has PC Miler on their website if you are a member. You can also use mapquest for free (www.mapquest.com). Or you could just key in "mapquest" into the search engine. I have found the miles pretty close and sometimes higher than the actual. I would prefer to be higher than lower on miles when planning my trip. Both the OOIDA and mapquest are free.

Thanks Gman. I had looked at dieselboss.com and wondered how accurate it was and was wondering if there is a more convenient method to track fuel prices while in route and as the prices change.

I noticed that Garmin and Tom Tom are offering a fuel service now based on a subscription and that sounds interesting, but I read a review that mentioned the data mostly covered gasoline. In one of the reviews it mentioned Verizon is offering a fuel service as well. Has anyone tried these services?

I am surprised that they haven't integrated fuel pricing in the mapping software and offer suggestions for fueling on your route based on the best prices retrieved for your given route. Thanks again for the great feedback!

Longsnowsm

Always double check your motor carrier atlas when using mapquest to make sure you are on an approved route...

Also useing dieselboss look at the ex tax figure. Although fuel might be higher in a state, at the pump, it may actualy be cheaper to buy there as you are going to pay the fuel tax on the miles you run in that state anyway when you turn in IFTA miles. California was a good example a little while back (haven't figured it in the last month or so). If you were burning Az. or Nv. fuel you actualy ended up paying about 10 cents a gallon more than if you had been using Ca. fuel.

Best way to do it is figure how much fuel you will burn in a state and buy about that much there. I very rarely have an "IFTA" bill over 10 or 15 dollars.

I think merrick was using a service that would route you and provide fuels stops. I think it was this one. http://www.truckloadrate.com/


Big D, who is that in your avatar? Man he looks mean.

Thanks GMan for the mention.

Here is some clarification as well:

On the web site fuel prices - the current prices are fed directly from the major truckstops themselves. They do a good job of updating them but if an individual station changes the price mid-day then in can be delayed as far as the web site price as that information trickles in to the main corporate data center. However, again we find it to be very accurate the majority of the time.

On fuel prices into GPS or routing software - we do see that there are products available from Garmen, Tom-Tom etc. that are integrating this on some models, but as usual, they don't take big trucks into account much on these products so the diesel fuel in truck stops is still largely ignored.

We are releasing a new GPS truck tracking product soon that actually does allow you to click on your truck on a secure web page and then check the current fuel prices around that vehicle. It is a very cool feature but it is not so much for individual drivers and not integrated into a mapping program at this point. It is more for trucking companies to keep track of their fleets online and direct individual rigs to the cheapest fuel around that truck at the time.

- Don
www.dieselboss.com

Doesn't matter if your bill is $500 or if you get a $500 refund. What matters is you want to pay the least overall, and since you cannot affect how much IFTA you pay(overall, pump plus end of quarter) by where you fuel, you can only look at the "base price"(ex tax).

That's why everyone talks about the base price. Sometimes it's better to fuel up in higher tax states, sometimes not. But the tax doesn't determine where to fuel. It actually has nothing to do with it, so sometimes at the end you'll pay sometimes you won't.

Also, there are some states where you should NEVER fuel up in. Their base rate is always sky high.