Can you believe there used to be a time when the price of fuel wasn’t a huge issue? It wasn’t that we were all rich. It was before we realised oil was running out and the oil companies decided to exploit this news by jacking up the prices in search of astronomical profits. But that is an argument for another post on another blog. This post is about finding the cheapest possible fuel when your needle is gasping for its last breathe. The irony of this tip is that I didn’t discover it til I returned home from my big trip around Oz. Oh well, I take plenty of advantage of it now and not half an hour before writing this post, I was able to save a whopping 20c a liter while filling up.

So how do I do this? I hear you scream...

The answer is MotorMouth.com.au and no, that’s not the online forum for the local mother’s club meeting group. And yes, it is an Australian site for Australian fuel prices. Sorry rest of the world... The aim of the website is is to alleviate motorists’ frustrations with fuel price variations by providing a twice-daily ‘snapshot’ of fuel prices. And for the most part, it’s spot on.

The web site itself offers a variety of services for motorists, mostly in the form of links to car rentals and sales web sites, explanations of the various fuel types and their very own page of fuel saving tips of which one tip states “use public transport”... Really not a helpful one. But it is by far the “Price Search” tool that is gem stone here.

To use it is pretty straight forward. Just go to www.motormouth.com.au. On the front page, you’ll be present with the option to set up an account which, among other things, offers the ability to select favorites and have email alerts send out. This is great if you’re not traveling around the country and in a different town every day but if you are, or just don’t feel like signing your online life away to yet another web site, you can skip this entirely and jump right on to the search tool.

All you have to do is click on “Price Search” in the left hand sidebar. The first choice to make is to go with a “Map search” or an “Advanced search”. With the map search you select the state you are in and then to the right of the map you’ll be given the regions to choose from. I find this to be a bit too general, so like to use the Advanced search so I can really focus in on where I am.

For both types of searches, you must choose what type of fuel you’re looking for. You are also given the choice of which brand to look at or, as I do, keep it on all brands. You can then have three possible searches.

• The first is a “Postcode search” which is the choice I would recommend if you know the post code of where you are. If not, it’s worth trying to find out for the best results.
• The second is a “Suburb search” which is basically a drop down menu version of the “Map search. Although it is slightly more detailed as you select State and Suburb as opposed to State and Region.
• The third choice is “Street search” where you get to enter the State and a street name, or part of. I guess this would be useful if you are looking for the prices of a specific service station and know what street it’s on (or a rough idea).

Once entered, it only takes a few seconds to deliver back the results of your chosen area. A list of service stations is presented along with their address, fuel price and the date and time the price was collected. With fuel prices being able to jump 25c a liter or more in a matter of hours, this is good information to know.

I have now gotten in the habit of checking this web site every time I need to fill up, just to make sure I’m getting the best price available, or at the very least, the daily average price. My only complaint is that they haven’t wrapped the service up into an nice, easy to use, iPhone app. But who knows what the future holds. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t on the cards.

Do you have any great fuel saving tips to share?