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DAVE GUSSOWWeb sites listing fuel prices have been up for a while, but now they're getting a lot more hits.
Gas prices can change quickly nowadays, but some drivers are keeping up at Internet speed.
Brad Proctor watched Monday as gas prices rose about 20 cents a gallon in less than eight hours in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, tracking the action on his Web site (www.gaspricewatch.com)
"Our whole goal is very simple," said Proctor, founder of the site based in Centerville, Ohio. "It's just to let people know where the lowest-priced gas is in their neighborhood."
As gas prices have reached record highs, sites such as GasPriceWatch.com and GasBuddy.com have attracted thousands of new visitors and created an army of volunteers who travel local highways, jot down prices at local gas stations and then post them on the Web to share with other local drivers.
It's another form of Web activism that supplements traditional sources of gas price information, such as the American Automobile Association (www.fuelgaugereport.com) the federal Energy Information Administration (www.fedstats.gov/key_stats/EIAkey.html) and the Lundberg Survey (www.lundbergsurvey.com)
On Tuesday, AAA's site showed the average price of gas in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater market at $1.859 for regular unleaded. At GasBuddy's Tampa site (www.tampagasprices.com) prices ranged from $1.75 a gallon up to $1.98. And at GasPriceWatch, local prices also started around $1.75.
"We don't actually expect people to drive 10 or 15 miles out of the way to get it for 10 or 15 cents cheaper," said Jason Toews, cofounder of GasBuddy in Brooklyn Park, Minn. "It kind of defeats the purpose."
While driver anger over rising gas prices has been increasing this year, both GasBuddy and GasPriceWatch have been around for about four years. Toews and Dustin Coupal, both 29, have seen GasBuddy grow to 174 Web sites to cover local areas and have seen its visitors grow to 300,000 daily recently, 10 times its January level.
Both sites are similar in setup: Volunteers can sign up at the sites. Once they provide a valid e-mail address, they can start inputting information into databases. Depending on the number of volunteers in an area, prices can be updated in eight hours or so, or several days. In the Tampa Bay region, for example, GasBuddy has 1,316 volunteer spotters.
"We have some very loyal folks out there who are putting in prices," said Proctor.
Toews, who drives a Jeep Cherokee that averages about 18 miles per gallon, says they occasionally reward prolific posters with gas cards for their contributions. But most just like to participate.
For Proctor, GasPriceWatch grew out of a time when he was publishing a tech magazine in the Dayton, Ohio, area, and driving around to deliver it. As the circulation area grew, he began noticing different prices in different areas.
"We made a game out of it, who could find the lowest-priced gas," he said.
Both Toews and Proctor described the sites more as a labor of love than a major source of income, though both have some advertising. Toews is a computer programmer, Coupal an ophthalmologist, and Proctor, 46, a radio host for a technology show.
And this year, everyone is talking about gas prices.
"When you start talking 20-25 cents a gallon, that's a significant dollar amount coming out of your pocket," Proctor said. "It's almost like you're playing roulette" when you fill up.
- Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or 727 771-4328.