Fuel cards
A dime a gallon is $1,846 a year
At 120,000 miles and 6.5 mpg you burn about 18,462 gallons a year, so every cent off the pump price is worth roughly $185. That is why fuel cards exist and why the discount is the only part of the pitch worth reading closely.
It is also why routing matters more than most equipment. California is $1.993 a gallon over Gulf Coast in the week ending September 7, 2026, which over a year is $36,794 of difference from nothing but where you filled up.
What a discount is worth
Computed from your gallons rather than quoted from a brochure. The right column is the one to compare against any monthly fee or minimum a card asks for.
| Discount | Per gallon | Per mile | A year at 120k miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 cents a gallon | $0.05 | $0.0077 | $923 |
| 10 cents a gallon | $0.10 | $0.0154 | $1,846 |
| 15 cents a gallon | $0.15 | $0.0231 | $2,769 |
| 25 cents a gallon | $0.25 | $0.0385 | $4,615 |
| 40 cents a gallon | $0.40 | $0.0615 | $7,385 |
At 6.5 mpg and this week’s national average of $4.157. Change the miles and economy in the cost-per-mile calculator to see it against everything else you spend.
The cheap-state trick does not beat the fuel tax
You pay fuel tax to the state you BURNED the fuel in, not the state you bought it in. Buying in a low-tax state defers the tax; IFTA collects the difference at the end of the quarter. What buying cheap fuel actually saves is the difference in the rack price, which is real and is what the table on the diesel page shows.
Discount off what, exactly
Cards quote off retail, off cash price, or as a fixed cost-plus over rack. They are not comparable. A large discount off an inflated retail can be worse than a small one off cash, and the only way to know is to check a real receipt against the pump price on the day.
Read the fees, not the headline
Transaction fees, monthly minimums, out-of-network surcharges and whether the card is credit or prepaid. A card with a good discount and a per-transaction fee can lose to a plain one if you fill in small amounts, and a prepaid card ties up working capital you may need.
No card partner yet
We do not currently have a fuel card relationship, so there is nothing to click here. When there is, it will be marked as a paid referral at the link and listed on the disclosure page, and the table above will not change. The arithmetic works whether or not anybody is paying us.