RV FEATURE
When we decided to hit the road nearly a year ago, we knew fuel
costs were going to use up a large chunk of our weekly budget. But
did we realise just how much? No. Was this naive? Maybe. I mean,
when driving any motor vehicle it’s inevitable that you’re going to
have to re-fuel. Add the load in the car and a caravan to the mix,
and up goes your consumption.
Running correct tyre pressures
will help fuel economy.
We left Adelaide in January 2018 and fuel prices were pretty fair at
around $1.20/L. But the longer we have travelled, the higher the
prices have risen and the more conscious we have become about
the cost of fuel.
When travelling outside of major towns or cities, we expect to pay
more at the bowser and there are fair reasons for this. Supply and
demand are a major factor; regional and remote areas don’t sell
as much fuel as cities so therefore don’t buy as much, resulting in
less lucrative bulk buys.
Then there are the transport costs. Just as you pay more for postal
deliveries to regional and remote areas, you have to do the same
with fuel. The fuel has to get there, which includes costs for retailers
and could even include some shocking dirt roads. Also, there are
international benchmarks set at the US dollar so if the Aussie dollar
isn’t doing too well, that’s bad news for us.
So do we always pay lots more in regional areas compared to
cities? You might be surprised to read that our answer is ‘no, not
really’. It is usually only a few cents of difference. We’re currently
travelling in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. Our latest
fuel stop was a roadhouse around 180km from a small town in
each direction. We paid $1.55/L for diesel on the same day many
retailers in the city of Perth were selling fuel at $1.72/L.
Very remote areas, on the other hand, can charge you a lot more to
fuel-up than a city or town. The most remote area we have visited
is Cape York and the most we paid up there for fuel was $2.02/L,
which we felt was justified and we knew what to expect. In other
remote places, expect to pay more than $3/L which, again, in our
view is fair given the challenges around freight and volume of sales;
however, we’d have to give travelling there a miss!
Unfortunately, fuel is an unavoidable cost for us and most people,
so we must grin and bear it. We feel clear comparisons can be
made between the isolated retailers who seem to charge fairly and
those in tourism hotspots and even in major cities where the prices
fluctuate substantially to favour the retailer to the point of taking
the Mickey!
gorv.com.au
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