One Tank, or Two?

Did you know that it’s about 25% cheaper to have two 5-gallon LP gas tanks filled, rather than having them filled one at a time?<br />n<br />nWe got home from Tahoe the other night, and soon after I turned the camper’s water heater back on, the tank ran dry. I hadn’t filled the other spare, so I had two tanks to be filled. Went down to the corner filling station and had both filled at once.<br />n<br />nTurned out, the total cost was about $30. Normally, I pay $20 to get one tank filled.<br />n<br />nThe reason behind this is the pricing structure. The minimum they’ll sell you is five gallons, even if you don’t take all five gallons. This will always be the case even if you bring in an empty 5-gallon tank because they’ll only fill it to 4.8 gallons. What this means is you never want to take a single tank down to be “topped off”, or you pay for a full tank.<br />n<br />nBut, if you take more than one tank in, the meter will keep running, and after the first five gallons, the per-unit cost of the gas is less, so in the end, it’s less money to get two filled.<br />n<br />nWe have about four tanks around here, two on the camper, one spare, and one on the gas grill. I’ll need to do a bit better gas management to keep our heating and cooking costs down.