I’ll admit, I may have been a bit shortsighted. It’s no secret that fuel prices have been on the up-and-up over the past few months, and both of my cars run best on 93 octane. That 87-octane stuff? They aren’t tuned from it from the factory, so I’m not even going to try. However, thanks to regulation, gasoline is generally gasoline. This means that Costco is raking it in right now, and you can take advantage of it so long as you have a membership card.
Admittedly, I don’t have a membership card. I also don’t have a Costco with an attached gas station near me. I have, however, previously accompanied my parents to a Costco fill-up, and noted the lines during on-peak hours. Evidently, you all have too, because the lines struck a chord when Matt mentioned Costco’s fuel sales in The Morning Dump.
Sometimes, if the savings are big enough, queueing is worth it. However, sometimes the savings aren’t really there, or the wait’s too aggravating, or other Costco stuff catches your attention. You’ve all adopted all sorts of strategies, and they all make a great deal of sense depending on the situation.
First up, it’s Phil, who perfectly explained the difference between your stomach and your car’s stomach:
Costco? I will wait half a day in line to get one of their mutated how-the-fuck-did-they-grow-it-so-big rotisserie chickens for $5.00, but I’ll be damned if I wait in their gas lines to save $0.50 a gallon.
I’m not rational.
Hey, a bigger chicken for a low, low price represents some real savings and real cravings. Meanwhile, $0.50 a gallon in say, a 15-gallon tank works out to $7.50 for a functionally comparable product to whatever the service station up the street is selling. Sometimes, it’s just not worth waiting around for those sorts of savings. Perhaps the solution is going during off-peak hours, as LTDScott does:
I work two blocks from a Costco with a gas station and car wash that opens at 6AM. It’s great since it’s pretty empty at that hour and I can quickly drop in before work at 7:30. If I had to wait in line the cost savings wouldn’t be worth it.
Speaking of filling up, GirchyGirchy takes a different approach to refuelling with a focus on avoiding the enshittification that comes with companies being able to stuff color displays in all sorts of places:
I buy my gas pretty much exclusively at a Shell station I pass twice/day. It’s usually the cheapest in that little area and I’m part of their discount program, so I get a whopping $0.05 off/gallon.
But the main reasons I use it are:
1) No ads.
2) The chip reader asks me zero questions.I put my card in, wait for a click, pull it out, hit the 87 button, and gas up in silence. That’s far too rare today. Even when it’s not the cheapest I use it anyway because it’s a luxury I’ll gladly pay for.
Hear, hear! At-the-pump video ads have recently arrived to gas stations near me, and while the new pumps’ nozzles tend to work better, I hate having unwanted audio blasting right next to me, especially during quiet hours. It was nice when stations switched the pumps to ones that no longer required flipping that lever when you were done filling up, but gas station ads are a huge step back.
Elsewhere in the news, you know that Donut battery that is allegedly solid-state? Evidence is mounting that it might not be what it says on the box. Mercedes dove into a report that claims the charging curves and voltage ranges of Donut’s cells seem to match normal lithium batteries, and the evidence provided gives plenty of room to doubt Donut’s claims. As far as lightening the mood goes, credit to James McHenry for laying on a thick glaze of puns:
Donut get taken in by the tasty marketing, it tastes sweet but it’s really empty calories. There isn’t much cruller than being led on by delicious lies and half truths, but under examination there’s just too many holes.
I’m sorry. And also hungry.
Meanwhile, Porsche and Pixar teamed up for a trio of one-off 911s, each themed after a different “Toy Story” character. A GT3 RS themed after Buzz Lightyear, a Targa 4 GTS themed after Jessie, and a Carrera T themed after Woody. They look pretty nifty, although a competitive gathering of the trio may result in some unintentional innuendo, as Sid Bridge wrote:
Just don’t race them unless you brief whoever is calling it not to accidentally say “And he’s coming up behind Jessie with the Woody.”
Badum-tss. Anyway, that’s all for me tonight, hope you’re all having a wonderful Wednesday.
Top graphic image: 20th Century Fox
I made an Excel sheet to determine how far one should drive to get cheaper gas. assuming time is not money.
Need several inputs:
If the cheaper gas is on the way of a scheduled trip or if it is time for a Costco trip anyway, there is no need to analyze.
Personally convenience is a big deal for me too. If the station is near me, on the right side of the road, and has no line I will go there rather than drive across town or make left turns to save .25 per gallon on 10 gallons.
1-smart man. avoid left turns
2-costco is only ~~15c cheaper near me. my rule- i ll wait if the line is no more than 2 cars
The Costco lines are far more orderly. We just got a new one in Camarillo with FOUR pumps per line and the convenient red-light-green-light feature to denote which ones are busy or available, respectively.
And, if I need gas and not near a Costco, I can get 2 gallons close by that will keep me running until I do go to Costco.
Can add some kind of “convenience” factor to the Excel sheet. That would be a highly variable concept, since it is a personal preference.
10 miles is no biggie for me, but I often incorporate gas into a Costco run, which should, in theory, save even more money.
I work in the county to the south of where I live. Costco there is typically $0.35 per gallon cheaper than my local Costco. (Local fuel tax difference.) I will drive whichever car needs fuel to work to save $10 per tank and wait in a shorter line.
Just stopped by Costco and got gas at 7:15 today, no line 🙂
I hate it too. Fortunately on many pumps you can kill at least the audio by hitting the top or second from the top button on the right hand side of the screen, even though it is not marked for that. You’re welcome.
I hate the ones that try to guilt trip you into buying a fuel additive on a weekly, monthly of quaterly basis. If your gas is so great, why do I need to add more additives?
Once every summer I’ve been running the tank low then buying a tank of premium, which Mobil claims to have twice the usual cleaning additives. Plus my engine is rated for 87 all year, but can use 91 in the summer “for full performance.” This year? What am I, made of money?
My wife I had a BMW X5 I married into, which suggested 91 octane and then a non-turbo MDX. I couldn’t tell the difference between using 87 or 91. Guess I didn’t drive the BMW hard enough. I usually stepped up to 89 on the X5, because that was “her” car. And she had the heavier right foot. Both cars outlived our marriage and I no longer care.
If I am at either home, I generally fill up at BJ’s. I have never waited more than 5 minutes, nor would I – I’d just come back some other time or buy elsewhere if I was in a hurry. BJ’s and Sam’s are the cheapest, by far, near me. There is a Costco in the area, but it’s on the far side of the next town in both states and not in my usual driving area. I’ve bought stuff from them via thier website (friend’s membership), but have never actually set foot in a Costco. Nothing against them, sounds like a great operation, just never had one convenient enough to me in the past, and I already have the BJ’s membership. My housemates in Maine have a membership, I keep meaning to go with them just to check it out.
Unless I am making a LOT of trips to the airport for work, or on my annual FL-ME migration, I rarely buy more than a tank of gas a month, so I don’t particularly care what it costs – but I get a BJ’s membership for free from my mother, so why not save a few bucks? I don’t buy enough there, gas or otherwise, to buy a membership of my own. Basically, gas, $5 mutant rotisserie chickens, and occasionally a 35-rack of Coke Zero if it’s not on sale at Publix when I am getting low on my caffeinated beverage of choice. Much as I loath the Walton family, I actually prefer Sam’s Club – they have tastier chickens. But once we got a BJ’s, Mom prefers that so she switched.
Costco here in Toronto used to be one of a few reliable sources of 93 octane that was 100% gasoline. Now, with “clean fuel” regulations, everything might be at least 10% ethanol. Never mind that growing corn to make ethanol is among the stupidest things we do.
Wait, they’re doing something to the chickens?!
I think he was just talking about how meat chickens are bred to grow really quickly to be processed as quickly as possible. Not a costco specific thing.
…I’m still hungry. Maybe I should eat more for breakfast.
As I’d really have to go out of my way to fill at a Costco, and I only need to buy 5-6 gallons of Premium a week, I just fill up at the Phillips 66 with the big car wash in town. Getting an average of 30 mpg is great!
I generally use two gas stations in my life. Meijer about a mile from my house, or the Marathon near my work. Neither have video ads, neither bug me for car washes or membership cards. Meijer can be a bit slow some days but in general I’m more annoyed about the traffic light getting back out to turn left.
Back in the day (not sure if it’s the same today) the Meijer gas station also had drinks priced the same as in the store rather than with a big mark up. So decent price gas and the option (even if I didn’t take it often) for a drink/snack without blowing the few bucks I saved on gas versus the Shell that was very slightly more convenient.
I sometimes fill up at Costco, but it is seldom the cheapest gas in town. It is on one end of town where it is the only gas station for miles, so the price is usually in-line or slightly above gas stations in town. What is wild to me is the number of folks who queue up for the gas, not realizing if they drove another mile or two they could fill up for less without the wait, but I suppose it shows how good the Costco marketing really is.
Costco is close to the cheapest but not always the cheapest near me. If you know where to look it’s cheaper than Costco with no line, no way are you saving 50¢/gal.
It’s an oddly local thing and I’ve been told by workers that the prices are set by HQ. The closest Costco to me currently has 85 for $3.93/gal the second lowest price in the local area is still $4.30 (this was June 11), which is a lower tier gas; a more equal comparison would be Exxon/Chevron/Shell which are all about another 10-ish cents more per gallon. When you factor in Executive/card rewards it’s about another 20 cents cheaper per gallon (5% combined between the rewards). Everything combined, it comes to a savings of about $8.50 (12 gal) to $11 (16 gal) per fill up. I’m lucky in that it’s usually only about a 5 minute detour and the waits usually aren’t terrible. I know a lot of people around here (myself included) are picky about fuel quality and routinely pass several lower quality sources to get gas from higher quality stations. I see it as a double win for the same minor inconvenience.
Back to the main point of my reply; other Costco’s in the general area don’t have the same gap, some are only 10-15 cents cheaper than their local competition which can skew the math above dramatically. I’ve also noticed the pattern that Costco doesn’t raise their gas prices as quickly as other stations so when prices are going up, the gap is usually larger.
The quality of the gas is something I overlooked, the cheapest station is never a Shell or a Chevron, sometimes an ARCO but usually an independent.
If someone cared about the tier of gas costco is probably their best bet round here.
The quality of gas didn’t occur to me until a friend pointed it out. I’ll admit I’m pretty lucky in that an after work Costco gas stop is just a matter of taking a 5 minute longer route once a week, it’s usually at an off-peak time so there’s rarely much of a wait.
I do not miss the pump ads since leaving the US. Why are they so bright and louddddd. The only Costco here is 20-30mins away from home/work, plus the price is only around 4c/L cheaper (15c/gal) than the cheapest other ones that are directly on my commute.
Doesn’t make much sense and the ones I visit are at least not giving money to a US megacorp.
FWIW Costco is a considerably more ethical corporation than comparable businesses like Sam’s Club, I.E. Wal-Mart, one of the most evil corporations around.
Luckily, I don’t have to worry about Walshart here.
Agreed. Costco treats even its part-time employees as human beings, with advance schedules, decent pay, and benefits. Shocking. Also sad that it’s so shocking.
Agreed. While all corporations are bad to at least some extent, Costco is definitely one of the least bad. It’s about the best we can hope for…
I really hope fuel pump ads stay a US-only phenomena, they sound horrible.
Usually, just press the second button down on the right side of the screen (unidentified, of course) to mute audio on the fuel pump.
As Thomas noted, they’ve begun to invade Canada. Utterly obnoxious. The gas station is already plastered in (physical) ads everywhere you look, but heavens forfend that I should have sixty seconds of my day without a screen screaming at me.
No line at my Costco today and gas was 60 cents/gal cheaper than elsewhere. Costco gas is Top Tier rated.
A lot of people don’t factor in Executive or Costco CC rewards which are not insignificant with gas prices being what they are. We usually pay for our Executive Membership through gas rewards alone. I don’t think we’ve actually paid out of pocket for a membership for at least a decade…
My local Shell station is on a busy 6 lane road. They have those things up LOUD! If I was stopping for gas on my way to the airport for an early flight when there was no competing traffic noise, those things would almost literally scare poop out of me.
It has electrolytes!
It’s what plants crave!
Every time I see that picture of Adrian,”What if goth were one of us” plays.
Just a sloth like one of us?
Although I really don’t see him being on a bus at any point.
More of a punk, but I distinctly recall a bemohawked individual on a bus in Star Trek IV.
Maybe Mercedes’s old school bus.
“Meanwhile, $0.50 a gallon in say, a 15-gallon tank works out to $7.50”
That’s a chicken and a half. Nothing to sneeze at.
There was a time when I was a little kid and I measured the cost of things by how many Zebco rod and reel combos I could buy for the cost.
202s or 404s? 🙂
I still do it in Mexico. How many margaritas is that t-shirt?
My son measures things by the $6 sandwich and drink deal at the locally owned shop nearby. If something small like a hat costs 3 or 4 sandwiches, he’s out. Nope!
Here’s the thing though: $7.50 savings for a tank of gas is pure Opportunity Cost. If you make $30 per hour at your job, that’s 15 minutes of your time, which translates to a 3-4 car-deep line.
The rotisserie chicken, however? Can you get a similar chicken, for a similar (or even a higher) price elsewhere?
Except you are not (or should not be) taking time off work to wait in line. You are spending your free time which by definition nobody is paying you for.
Really? You’ve never run errands during your lunch time?
I’ve only ever had one job where I was paid for my lunch time and running errands was highly discouraged.
You don’t clock out for lunch?
You are paid by the hour? I haven’t had a job where I had to punch a timeclock in 35 years…
No but salaried employees aren’t paid for lunch breaks unless they are “on call” and “subject to the control of an employer.” Sometimes that can be performed just as effectively sitting in the gas line at Costco as sitting at a desk.
Not sure how you figure that. I get paid X amount per year no matter what I actually do (for the most part – exception later). I am just expected to get my assigned work done, as I need to do it, and be available during our standard 9-6 office hours. Which doesn’t mean I am IN my home office, just that I am answering the phone (rare) and replying to e-mail in a reasonably timely manner and attending meetings as needed. And I am actually available anytime someone reaches out to me – which is not abused. I have some of my best chats with my boss in the the middle of the night – we are both nocturnal.
Sometimes my actual work takes a few hours a week (I hate that, booooring), sometimes it might take 60hrs for an onsite engagement that has gone sideways plus the travel time (suckfest too). Technically I also get a bit more for directly client billable work, but at this point that is about rounding error and I use it as “fun money”.
This week was a bit busy – I participated in a Dell Cert Exam writing workshop, and was doing a bunch of prepwork for the next few weeks engagements, so I was doing some juggling, and even worked some in the evenings (unusual when not onsite). If anyone here takes and fails the Dell VXRail 8.X Design Certification Exam, you can partially blame me. 🙂 Actually, that goes for the PowerStore Deploy exam, I helped write that too. I enjoy the work, and it means I get out of taking the cert tests.
How do I figure that? From lawyers:
https://bartzlawgroup.com/breaks-for-salaried-exempt-workers-california/
Being on call to simply pick up the phone and answer a client’s question can probably be done just as well sitting in a car at the gas station as at a sportsball game, while making an only fans video, changing oil, delivering doordash or polishing up the old resume as slowly dying inside while sitting at a company desk.
Point being one is not losing money in a line at the gas station than doing any of those other things.
I also find it strange how people who claim to be too good for the gas station line usually waste hours each and every day commuting rather than fighting for WFH.
Important point *California*. Do not assume that applies in the other 49 states, or Federally. As a general rule, while there may be time expectations for salaried employees, in many cases there are no hard requirements, per se. As I said in another post – if your time is that controlled and regulated, you are probably improperly classified as exempt. My first professional employer got nailed to the wall by the state for that and paid many millions in back pay. Not to me, sadly, I was properly classified even though my boss was annoyingly a clock-watcher.
I’ve been working from home for almost 20 years – and blazed a trail for 90%++ of my company being WFH today and spread across 28 states. You won’t find a more staunch advocate for it than myself.
Similar rules in Texas:
“However, in Texas, there is no law that requires employers to give their employees any lunch break at all. While a Texas employer does need to give its employee time to eat lunch, if it does so, it must pay its employees for the time if they use their lunch break primarily for the employer’s benefit”
https://www.wiley-wheeler.com/employment-law-faqs/can-you-get-paid-for-meal-periods/
NY requires unpaid meal breaks with no apparent provision to get paid by working through them:
https://www.schwabgasparini.com/blog/meal-and-rest-break-requirements-for-new-york-employers/
In any case I still argue waiting in line to buy gas is not a missed opportunity to earn.
Feel free to go through all 50 states laws if you have nothing better to do. And also, good luck with a lawsuit over this very minor issue.
Who said anything about a lawsuit? My point was simply that the humblebrag of waiting in line to buy cheaper gas to be some kind of financial hardship is, generally speaking, bulls#it.
And yet you are off on some weird pedantic tangent about it. As I said, my time has value, whether it is paid in dollars by my employer or not is moot. And some people could miss out on actual pay by waiting in that line in weird circumstances. You really need to back down off the spectrum a bit my friend.
Bringing legal technicalities into it implies that someone can get sued over it. There is no other recourse – law is either civil or criminal, and unless they literally chain you to your desk so you can’t physically go on break, the recourse is civil, thus a lawsuit. But as I said – good luck. The vast majority of salaried positions don’t track time in any sort of detailed way anyway.
Calling out a missed opportunity falsehood =/= and <<<<< filing a lawsuit.
Salary. But either way, 15 minutes in a Costco gas line means either getting in 15 minutes earlier, or leaving 15 minutes later.
No. It means you spend 15 minutes of unpaid time standing in line to get gas to save some money or 15 minutes of unpaid time doing something else that may not save as much money.
IMHO – that isn’t salaried. That is your employer dodging having to pay you overtime if they are that persnickety about 15 minutes. You might as well be punching a time clock. Salary should mean your time by the clock spent doesn’t matter, you do what you need to do to get the job done, and EXACTLY when you do it doesn’t matter much (within reason, obviously some things are scheduled and you have to do them at set times). I had one salaried position where my boss was a clock watcher – never again. I’m a professional, I expect to be treated as one, as long as my job is done professionally. If I want to take a 2hr lunch and my deadlines allow that, I am going to take a 2hr lunch and not even think about it. Or come in late, leave early, whatever life outside work requires.
I guess if you always have exactly 8hrs of work to do such that 15 minutes spent not working means that 15 minutes extra needs to be spent, so be it. But that would be very odd.
> I’m a professional, I expect to be treated as one
This is the way.
My free time is far from free. It’s more valuable to me than my work time, I have far less of it. And being salaried, my pay is not based on time spent. I make the same weeks where I am sitting around all day commenting here while while “being available” as weeks when I am up to my elbows in some company’s SAN onsite. Especially considering how much of my work time is spent away from home. When I am busy with work, I have VERY little time to get my actual life things done in-between. The last thing I am going to do is wait around a gas station for more than a minute or two.
For perspective, after this weekend, I am home six days between Monday and the 4th of July. And that’s if I don’t get stuck somewhere due to flight dilemmas, or project dilemmas meaning I get to stay an extra day or two. THAT’S always fun…
That is certainly your prerogative. That time spent in the Costco gas line could certainly be better spent waiting in other lines, like the line to exit Costco, rush hour traffic, the latest iPhone release, purchasing Jonas brothers tickets,…
Other than traffic, which is beyond one’s control for the most part, I would never wait in line for any of those things, so I very much agree with you.
The chickens are literally twice as big for half the cost of anywhere else in town. Worth the long-ass walk to the far back corner of the giant warehouse to get one. I usually get one breast meal, one big pot of soup, and a few meals of chicken salad out of one. Deal of the century!
The gas is fine, but my time is too valuable to spend much time waiting for it. Luckily, there is rarely more than a 1 car wait here – but this IS God’s Waiting Room, FL, so the doddering Cryptkeepers trying to figure out how to get the pump to read thier BJ’s card and then pump the gas can take a while. I have taken matters into my own hands and done if for a couple of old dears who were staring at the pump cluelessly.
“I usually get one breast meal, one big pot of soup, and a few meals of chicken salad out of one. Deal of the century”
If you want you can take it even further. Pressure cook the carcass in a few cups of water for a half hour at high pressure and you’ll get even more soup base. That also softens the bones to the point you can pulverize them with a hard pinch. Throw those softened bones into a blender with a bit more water (and if you’re generous the new soup base and the bag juice) and you’ll end up with a pate your pets or wild animals if you feed them will love. Add some vegetable scraps FTW, carrots, peas are good but not onions. The whole bird gets used and nothing but the empty bag goes into the trash.
I haven’t found a use for that bag yet but I’m open to suggestions.
Keep them if you need smaller bags to take individual items to the trash outside because they’ll get really nasty if you put them in the trash inside (Styrofoam meat trays, for example)
I tried that. It doesn’t take long to get overwhelmed with containers.
LOL – you are far more hardcore than I am. I don’t even usually bother to boil the carcass, I just used boxed chicken stock. I hate bones in my soup, and always seem to miss some when I don’t just use the meat. Plus I am fundamentally lazy – hence using rotisserie chicken in the first place. I can roast a chicken from scratch, I just don’t want to, LOL.
I guess you could wash the bag and use it to take your lunch to work?
Try this and you’ll never want boxed stock again:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3k20zFlbFfE
Chris is absolutely right when he says ALL the flavor of the meat is extracted into the stock. The meat tastes like chewing on wet cardboard. Sounds gross (and it is) BUT that flavorless meat takes up other flavors very well. I’ve found it makes good base protein for tacos, curry, etc where there are a lot of spices similar to how tofu is used. I prefer to use the meat since I hate waste. But you don’t have to use the meat for stock if you don’t want to. Just the carcass and skin alone yields a stock that tastes pretty much the same to my palate as using the whole bird. Or run separate batches for the meat and the rest using the same liquid.
I did try his consumee process as well. It works just as described, for chicken and for beef. The only difference is the beef needed a slightly higher temperature in the fridge to melt.
I’ll give it a shot, looks interesting. But I am fundamentally lazy, I really only go all out cooking at the holidays.
Well there’s always TV dinners and the McD drivethru for the truly lazy.
I definitely have those days. The McDouble Value meal is hard to beat for $5, and I keep frozen chicken pot pies in stock.
Those pot pies are great backup.
I hadn’t considered that for my dog, I’ll have to try it. Thanks for the tip!
I have fed this to my cats as well as opossums, skunks, raccoons, crows, even the occasional squirrel for years with no complaints yet so I expect dogs will also find it acceptable. If available I add the mush from making vegetable stock as a source of fiber. Before I discovered pressure cooking I used to add pulverized eggshells as a source of calcium and phosphorous for the opossums since they can develop severe health issues if they don’t get enough of these minerals. Sometimes I add a bit of food grade diatomaceous earth as a dewormer.
https://www.vetinfo.com/using-diatomaceous-earth-to-worm-pets.html
I expect the wild ones are in dire need of deworming.
Some larger bone fragments can end up in the pate because this I’m not using industrial grade machinery but those fragments just get spit out. From what I’ve seen those fragments are rounded, not sharp, like they’ve been through a rock tumbler. If you’re worried about it you can add water to make a slurry and run it through a mesh filter. I think dogs wouldn’t mind a nice bone soup instead of pate.
Turkey is another option. The bones take longer to soften but they do, eventually. You can get a lot of animal foot out of a turkey carcass.
From there portions get frozen in silicone muffin tins and served frozen as meatsicles.
Costco Chickens are bigger and cost less (someone has done the research versus grocery store’s fare). Worth a trip just for it? No. As part of the $300 Costco run? Certainly!
Bless you
What if they run out of chickens while he’s in the gas line?
I have chickens, not a large number but productive unto the cause, they have names as proscribed by small people, all names must start with M.
Bad Nic, Mmm, that was ‘selicious where did that come from.
It used to be that the 2nd button down on the right would mute these, but that’s been hit or miss the past couple years. I still try every time juuuust in case. I’ve also seen where people have taped over the speakers haha. Not sure if those are used for any other purpose; maybe something ADA related if I had to stretch for another idea. But if you’re that visually impaired, I hope you’re not driving…
Ha, literally came here to post about the 2nd right button on the pump screen, but I too have had mixed success lately.