Fuel Costs Southern Leg

We made five fuel stops on our way south from Ontario, Canada to the Myakka River Motorcoach Resort in Florida:

1. Erie, PA
2. Morgantown, WV
3. Wytheville, VA
4. Bowman, SC
5. Dade City, FL

I had made a rough estimate for our fuel costs. The trip is about 2,400 kilometres or 1,500 miles. The coach can get roughly 7 miles to the gallon which means the trip would require 215 gallons. Given the topography on our route — we had lots of mountains to climb — I thought the miles per gallon estimate would be lower than 7 mpg and I planned on using 250 gallons for the trip.

The average price for diesel at the end of October, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, was $3.355 USD per gallon. Based on my planned usage of 250 gallons, the cost of fuel would be $838.75 USD. I rounded that up to $850 USD or roughly $1,120 CAD.

I wound up putting $1,500 CAD into the budget for diesel fuel in November.

We purchased 238.1463 gallons of diesel although I am sitting on about 75 gallons in the tank at our site. We started the trip with roughly that same amount of fuel so it evens out it terms of overall consumption.

We paid $809.19 USD in fuel costs to get to Florida or roughly $1,060 CAD. Slightly below my estimate and well below our budget.

It looks as though our fuel efficiency was about as expected. We wound up putting on a few hundred miles more than planned and we averaged 6.723 mpg.

I travelled at 59 miles per hour on the Interstates for most of the trip. Coming down on the last day of our southern leg, I increased that speed to 62 miles per hour on the Interstates. However, we had a fair amount of travel time on rural highways and mountain roads. There was also a lot of construction on the roads. All of that would have impacted our fuel consumption.

This information gives me useful insight into planning our leg from Florida to California. We do that drive in February although I hope to avoid buying diesel fuel in California. Diesel prices there are way above the U.S. average at $4.00 or more per gallon.