FINDING IT

Gas Buddy gathers information from stations all across North America and then sorts it by region. The interactive gas price maps are great as prices vary as you cross state or provincial lines (and even from one county to the next). There’s a link on the site for free mobile apps.

AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report collects price info on a daily basis by U.S. state. The website has a very cool fuel cost calculator that allows you to plug in your trip start and finish points (drawback: it only uses major cities), the vehicle you are driving and – voila! – it calculates trip distance (in miles), gas (in U.S. gallons) and the estimated fuel costs based on the day’s prices at the pump.

In Quebec, it’s possible to track the prices of gas by region at the CAA-Quebec’s Gasoline Watch  website.

DOING THE MATH

The fast way is to take the price per gallon at the pumps in the U.S. and multiply by .26 = $/litre.

For example: $3.60/ U.S. gallon  X .26 = 94¢/litre
(in U.S. dollars, so this is the point where you’ll need to make the currency conversion).

Or, you can head to a conversion website, plug in the dollar amount on the pump and let the experts do the math.

Remember the number you come up with is in U.S. dollars, so to convert to Canadian dollars multiply the number you calculated by the current exchange rate.

PAYING AT THE PUMP

Across the U.S. it is standard to pay at the pump or pre-pay inside the station before pumping fuel. Many pumps ask for a U.S. zip code before they will authorize the use of a credit card.

For Canadians, try this trick. When asked for your “zip code” enter the three numbers that are a part of your postal code + 00 and you’ll be away to the races. For example, we use “71100.”