What's your preferred gas station?

Shell! and I use premium (92). Call me crazy but I can feel the performance difference in the way my car drives.

I always preferred Amoco. There aren’t many here, though, so for the good car I’ll go to Shell or Texaco—for the good car.

For the old one I’ll go to Wal*Mart or HEB or whatever.

The only one I ever avoid, if possible, is Exxon.

Sam’s Club, because it’s always at least 5–10 cent cheaper.

The cheapest place, which is usually Wawa.

We get money back for filling up at our local grocery store.

Whatever is the cheapest and closet. I don’t have an exact algorithm. Sometimes it’s whatever doesn’t require a left-hand turn across a busy street.

I’m fickle and moody. There is nothing I always do the same way.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth driving out of the way a few miles to go to a cheaper gas station? What do you think?

Jet Pep when I’m low on cash otherwise I go Chevron. If I had neither of those around I’d go for what’s closest and preferably cheapest.

Sam’s Club, or Safeway when we have coupons, or Arco when we have cash.

a gas station that has an ATM, tobacco, beer, wood, lottery, car wash, a subway sandwich spot, milk, snacks and batteries and good gas prices.

where you ask? joliet IL at rte 52 and laraway.

Not BP thats for sure.

The nearest. Most of the chains that have stations in every corner of the nation are Top Tier approved.

You guys shouldn’t be so against using BP stations because of the oil spill. I would say most gas stations are owned by local people who choose (or forced, depending on which way you look at it) which fuel providers they need to make a profit. In other words, you’re probably hurting the people who own the station a lot more than you are the executive level of BP.

BP is cool with me too. stations are owned by local people who just have a franchise named BP.

Generally, it’s Race Track – mostly because they’re the cheapest, but also because they have 49 cent fountain drink refills, and who doesn’t need 64 ounces of Coke Zero for 49 cents?

@Seek_Kolinahr I can down a gallon of Coca-Cola in about 5 minutes, so having that kind of deal more than 10 miles away from where I am is infuriating.

The local one here that treats debit cards the same as cash with the 8 cent discount per gallon.

I generally prefer Arco as, at least here, they are almost 20 cents a gallon cheaper than the others.

@Fred931 Spot-on about BP! I hate them as much as the next person, but I’m not going to bankrupt my neighbor just because that’s who he buys his gas from.

Chevron. It has Techron, which sounds cool.

Anything but BP. All i need is lead replacement fuel and just about all stations have that.

I try to stay from fuel with ethanol. Here a good link why. I like Shell gas. I avoid Exxon.

http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/2008/jun/22/problem-ethanol/

For years my gasoline of first choice was Mobil, then Exxon, then ExxonMobil… and then I switched to Shell… and now it’s whatever’s cheapest and/or most convenient, usually HEB or Sam’s Club. (When I was a kid, you pulled into a gas station and one, sometimes two attendants pumped the gas, checked the oil, and radiator and tires, and cleaned the windows all around… all for under 25 cents a gallon!)

@Austinlad When I was driving down here from NJ I stopped at a gas station in Oklahoma. Before I could get out of the car two guys with white uniforms and those white peaked caps came out and started doing the full service job: checking air pressure, oil, etc. It was pretty nice, especially since I’d been driving for two days. Sadly, the gas was more than 25 cents.

@BoBo1946 Thank you so much for that link! I’ve been saying that ethanol screws up cars (especially older ones like my 1985) for years but nobody believed me since I didn’t have it in print.

@jerv You are very welcome. Because of the expense of gas, I don’t always use premium, but occasionally use a tank of premium to clean my pistons etc.

Never buy cheap gasoline, like Swifty and some of those at convenience stores. gasoline comes out of the barge, according to the company. the lower the gasoline level in the barge, the liklihood of trash being in the gasoline. major oil companies also add cleaning agents to their gasoline and others do not. my car has 258,000 miles on the engine. i have used nothing but a major gasoline with cleaning additives. this does make a difference. i have proof, my car.

@BoBo1946 Most of my cars ping on mid-grade, and even those that didn’t usually got enough of an MPG boost to justify the cost. I mean, 5% more money for 10% more miles makes sense to me.

@john65pennington The old Toyota 4A-LC is tough enough to have survived 217K of abuse, mostly before I got it. It ain’t the gas; Toyotas are just that good.

@jerv ))))-

Tell y’all great story about gasoline stations. I wrote ads for Phillips Petroleum Co. in the early ‘70s (I worked for ad agency in Dallas; Phillips was headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma). One major ad I did was a full page corporate editorial about the then-current gas shortage. It ran in all the major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal.
Flash forward to the ‘90s. I’m sitting in front of my TV, half-watching an old Charles Bronson movie called “Mr. Majestyk” (1974). It takes place in Oklahoma. In one scene, Bronson walks into an old dusty Phillips station and asks to use the phone. I think he was running from some guys, or looking for some guys, something involving a chase. Anyway, the actor-attendant points to a phone on the opposite wall and Bronson walks over and dials a number. As he’s talking, the camera begins to zoom in closer and closer, and suddenly – I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES – I see my full page ad on the wall behind him. And the camera lingers on Bronson long enough to be able to read the headline!

What apparently happened, the production company scouted and used a real Phillips station, one that Phillips never modernized—and my ad had been hanging on the wall for like 20 years. I still had (and have) a lamented copy of it in my portfolio.