Full tank of petrol is bad for your wallet

Full tank of petrol is bad for your wallet 😮
by Mashfique Hussain Chowdhury
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Here is a scenario that happened to us just last week. We asked for a full tank of petrol at the station for our Chevrolet Cruze, which was already 60% full. The attendant put in the pump nozzle and left. The tank was then full and the nozzle “clicked” and stopped pumping at Dhs 39.40 only. So I pull out 40 bucks in cash, ready to hand it over. The attendant came over and started forcefully pumping more petrol into the tank, even as the nozzle clicked several times. This pushed up the bill to Dhs 42. The ironic bit is no one ever receives extra petrol after the first click. Any “extra” being forced in simply flows back into their storage tanks, but your bill still goes up.

According to the U.S. EPA government agency, topping off the tank can result in your paying for petrol that is fed back into the petrol station’s tanks because your car’s tank is full. The gas nozzle automatically clicks off when your tank is full. Modern petrol station pumps are equipped with vapour recovery systems that feed back gasoline vapours into their own tanks to prevent vapours from escaping into the air and contributing to air pollution. Any additional petrol you try to pump into your tank may be drawn into the vapour line and fed back into the station’s storage tanks.

If that weren’t enough reason to not go “full tank,” you need extra room in your petrol tank to allow the petrol to expand. If you top off your tank, the extra petrol may evaporate into your vehicle’s vapour collection system. That system may become fouled and will not work properly causing your vehicle to run poorly and have high gas emissions.

The only reason we topped up was because our 2010 Chevrolet Cruze long-termer does not have a trip computer, so we are having to calculate fuel economy manually by topping it up, resetting the trip meter, driving a certain distance and then topping up again to see how much fuel was burnt over that distance. In our Jeep Grand Cherokee, the way we drive, a topped-up tank causes a stench of petrol every time we take tight turns quickly. Who knows what’s spilling from where.

The real kicker is that petrol stations are damaging their own vapour recovery systems by forcing them in a bid to make a few extra bucks.

You can avoid being overcharged simply by asking for a monetary amount worth of petrol, say Dhs 50 or whatever, which you know to be less than full tank. Or you can ask for a full tank and argue with the attendant not to force the nozzle once it’s done. :((