On saving money, gasoline style

Most everyone likes to save money wherever possible.  A prepper likes to save money wherever possible in order to facilitate spending more money on more preps!  Here is a way for you to 1) save money (in two different ways in my case), and 2) gain a modicum of energy independence by building a small fuel stockpile.  

I recommend acquiring three (at a minimum) 5 gallon gas cans.  New ones cost about $10 or $12.  They quickly pay for themselves in this example.

Now me personally, I have nine of these cans.  Got one for three bucks at a garage sale, bought the rest new.  I rotate the stored fuel in multiples of three.  The way I figure it, I won't need to use any fuel additives to keep it usable as it will never be more than a year old.  Ignore anyone who says gasoline goes bad in that timeframe.  I bought an old Bronco in 2005, and only ever drove it about 15 miles.  Thing was a deathtrap...  Anyway, I did fill the tank the day I bought it.  When I finally sold it in 2009, it still ran just fine, with 4 year old, untreated gasoline in it.

So here it is:  the largest supermarket  in my area (I imagine lots of supermarkets are doing similar promotions across the country) has one of those deals where you get discounts off of fuel purchases at their gas stations based on how much money you spend in their grocery stores.  Also, they recently implemented another discount in which you get a percentage off of your grocery bill based on how much fuel you buy from them.  The key is the quantity of fuel.  It's limited to a maximum of thirty gallons.  These days, very few vehicles have that big of a gas tank, so you're never getting your money's worth.  And of course they say you can't bring gas cans, but I haven't had any issues yet, aside from a few strange glances from passerby's.

This technique works best if you have two vehicles to work with.  So you save up your discounts until they are about to expire.  Run both your vehicles down to empty, fill one up with 15 gallons of stored fuel, take the three now empty cans and the empty vehicle to the station and fill 'em up!  Fill the cans first to make it easy to know exactly how much fuel is going into each.  If you only have one vehicle, I'm sure you can convince a friend or a neighbor to participate with you.

The proof as they say is in the pudding; here is my best example:

 

And here is a more typical example:

And here is how the cycle starts again: