We just got back from our week long trip to Illinois to visit family and attend a wedding and since my wife’s family lives close to the Indiana border, we stopped for gas a few times in Indiana…and wow what a difference from California gas prices. Right now, gas here is about $3.60 per gallon, which sounds cheap compared to what we were paying only a month or two ago. But filling up in Indiana only costs about $2.79 per gallon, a difference of $.81 cents per gallon. On an average tank of 10 gallons, that is a difference of over $8.00 per fill up, which is huge! It got me wondering though why gas is so much cheaper there, and I could not find a real reason. On the Energy Department’s website, they have a gas tax comparison site on a state by state basis and I saw that gas taxes in California add up to $.504 per gallon and Indiana’s adds up to $.365 per gallon. As far as I can tell, that is only a difference of $.14 per gallon, not the true difference of $.81.

I know there are a few little taxes and fees that different states charge, but I doubt that they make up the difference of about $.65 cents per gallon. All I can say is that I almost wish you could bring gas back on an airplane as buying in bulk in Indiana would save me a lot of money. When I was in college I had a friend that lived in a very rural area in Virginia and they had their own in-ground gas tank that got filled up every few months…it got me thinking that maybe I could start a business delivering gigantic pre-filled gas tanks to expensive areas for people to put in their backyard. Yes, I know it is not feasible, but that price difference is amazing. If oil costs the same per barrel, it is hard to see why it costs almost a dollar more per gallon in certain areas.

Although I wish gas prices would continue to rise to about $5.00 per gallon nationwide in order to make people really think about the cars that they buy and how often they drive, it is hard knowing that people in Indiana pay a dollar less than I do for a gallon of gasoline. I could not believe that it was that much of a difference. How much do you pay for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in your area? I am curious to see the price differences between the states.

 StumbleUpon

 Reddit

 Digg

 Del.icio.us