The summer travel season is just about here and gas prices are on the rise in the Columbia area. A gallon of regular unleaded is selling for $2.66 per gallon in Columbia. That rate is 20 cents higher than it was this same time last year.
Rising prices are one thing to worry about, but have you ever considered you may not be getting everything you pay for when you fill up?
A driver like Garrett Freel wants the most bang for his buck every time he heads to the gas pump.
"I'm burning 100-110 miles worth of gas so it can really add up," says Freel.
The USC student drives back and forth to Dillon at least once a week...and that means a lot of fill ups for his more than 20-gallon tank. If a pump wasn't spitting out every drop of fuel he paid for Freel wouldn't be so happy about it.
"That would definitely make me upset," he says. "I've heard about that happening before, but I haven't necessarily had it happen to me."
So WACH FOX News did a test. We filled up two five-gallon containers to see what we got. We pumped them up to the fill line, but the readout showed we owed for slightly more than five gallons. So we took our questions to the South Carolina agriculture commissioner Hugh Weathers.
"We regulate everything in this state that is sold by weight or volume," Weathers says. "We find that about 2-2.5% of the pumps we check are in error."
Weathers has a team of 18 people who every year inspect the 67,000 gas pumps in South Carolina and they check them right down to the drop.
"We literally take out a calculator and multiply the gallons to the hundredth to a gallon like it registers and we multiply by the price that they're recording and it should come to your total sale," Weathers adds.
In the roughly two-percent of cases it doesn't, that pump will be taken out of service and will not get a seal of approval from Weathers' office until it does.
"We're checking that a gallon's a gallon and we have the specific equipment to do that called a prover, it's not just a five-gallon can," says Weathers. "We don't have an error rate allowed for price."
And that's music to the ears for someone like Garrett Freel who wants to get everything he pays for.
"I bet it would catch a lot of people because you don't really pay attention," says Freel.
Commissioner Weathers says since he's been in office he has never seen a South Carolina vendor deliberately alter a pump to shortchange a customer. However, the calibration can be off from time to time and he says that is purely accidental.
There are some simple tips to get the most bang for your buck.
- Fill up in the morning during the summer, high temperature can impact the amount of gas that goes in your tank.
- Wait for the monitor on the pump readout to zero out before you start pumping
- Pay attention to what you're getting. If you think there's something wrong report the problem to the Department of Agriculture at 803-737-9691.
Check out our Pain at the Pump page to find up to date gas prices in your area.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forWACH