Gassing Up Our RV Costs a Fortune. Here’s How We Save at the Pump

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It can be expensive to put gas in an RV. Keep reading for ways to save money on fuel. 

Our family has an RV that we travel in regularly. It’s a Class C, which means it’s one of the RVs that you drive and it’s not huge like the big bus-style campers, but it is still around 30 feet long.

Unsurprisingly, this RV does not get great gas mileage. Taking trips isn’t very checking account–friendly, as we spend hundreds of dollars to fill up the vehicle when we head off on adventures. The good news is, we have found a few ways to keep gas costs down so we don’t get stuck charging quite so much on our credit cards on each trip.

1. We keep our speed limit low

Driving too fast can significantly reduce the fuel economy of a vehicle as a result of air resistance and tire-rolling assistance. In fact, for every five miles you go above 50 MPH in light-duty vehicles, you effectively increase the cost of gas by $0.30 per gallon.

While I don’t have a light-duty vehicle, I still realize that driving too fast does make my RV less fuel-efficient, and there’s no reason to do that. Of course, it’s safer to drive slower in such a large vehicle as well.

2. Our tires are kept to the optimum pressure

Tire pressure also impacts fuel efficiency. You can get an average of 0.6% improvement in gas mileage simply by keeping your tires properly inflated. Keeping the tires at the proper pressure also makes driving the vehicle safer, which is obviously important to us when we have our kids and pets in the car.

3. We don’t carry unnecessary items

Avoiding carrying unnecessary items is another key way that we keep our camper as fuel-efficient as possible. The more weight you carry, the worse your gas mileage. We check our camper each time we come home for items we haven’t used on the trip and take them out so we aren’t paying to haul unnecessary gear.

4. We use an app to find the lowest gas prices while traveling

Finally, one of the best things we did was start using GasBuddy to find the cheapest gas stations near where we were traveling at any given time. The GasBuddy app allows us to input our location and specify what kind of fuel we want and how far we’re willing to go to get it, and we can immediately see a list of prices from nearby stations so we can pick the one that charges the least.

We’ve noticed there’s a surprising amount of variation in how much gas actually costs at different stations that are relatively close to each other. Sometimes we can find gas for as much as $0.10 or even $0.20 less per gallon just by being strategic about which station we stop at after using the app.

We also joined Pay with GasBuddy, which saves us up to $0.25 per gallon as long as we pay for our fuel with a prepaid card.

All of these actions have made a big difference in our big vehicle’s fuel efficiency. Whether you have a camper or a car, they could work to help you get better gas mileage as well. So offload unnecessary stuff, keep your tires inflated and your speed down, and consider trying out apps to help you save on gas.

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