Hunting for Cheap Gas? Cell Phone Can Be Guide: Text Message a ZIP Code, and Service Will Transmit a

May 26, 12:55 PM

Current Headlines: By Jennifer Bjorhus, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

May 26--It's not that it can do your emergency banking, navigate for you, and alert you to airline-travel deals. Or even that you can theoretically program your TiVo from the road with it.

What's important amid this most recent gas-price surge: Your trusty cell phone can find you the cheapest gas.

With the start of the summer driving season and gas prices hitting records, increasingly savvy cell-phone users are using their handsets to zero in on the best deals. A simple text message with a ZIP code to gas@gasbuddy.com, the popular national price finder service out of Brooklyn Park, will get you a return list of the nearby stations offering the cheapest gasoline.

Jason Toews, the site's 32-year-old co-founder, runs it out of his Brooklyn Park home. Toews started the cell-phone service in February after fielding constant e-mail requests from motorists for text messaging and wireless Web service. He's run his gas-checker Web site for about seven years.

Gasbuddy now gets 25,000 text-message requests a day checking deals, up from about 10,000 in February, said Toews. The site gets an additional 15,000 requests daily from cell phone Web browsers tapping Gasbuddy's companion, Gasbuddy togo.com.

Gasbuddy.com is free, although the text messaging or Web-browsing services on your cell phone are not.

"It's pretty handy when you're on the road," Toews said. "As prices go up we seem to be getting more and more traffic."

Gas in the metro area hit a nominal record on May 22, averaging $3.33 a gallon for regular unleaded, according to the auto club AAA Minneapolis. It's been above $3 since May 10. The national regular unleaded average peaked at $3.23 on May 24.

There are other similar services with cell-phone links, including Gaswatchinfo.com, Gaspricewatch.com, and MobileGates Corp. Gasbuddy claims to be one of the largest.

Some carriers themselves have bundled fuel finders into their service plans. Verizon Wireless uses MobileGates, a mobile search company in La Palma, Calif., that tracks gas prices nationally. Verizon charges $1.99 a month for the MobileGates fuel finder, on top of the monthly fee for the Web access package, which starts at $5 a month, according to Verizon spokeswoman Karen Smith.

MobileGates CEO Anthony Meador boasts his service is more accurate than Gasbuddy.com because gas stations report their own prices directly to it, although there are sometimes delays. Gasbuddy.com, by contrast, uses volunteer spotters who report gas prices.

Some of the cell-phone gas chatter can be chalked up to principle and gadget obsession. After all, the difference between filling a 10-gallon tank at $3.25 versus $3.30 is just 50 cents. But when your ride has a 20-gallon tank, a 20-cent difference can mean a difference of $4 at the pump. That's $500 a year, Toews points out. For someone at the helm of a Ford Excursion, an SUV with a 44-gallon tank, a 20-cent difference means an extra $8.80 at the pump.

"If it's just a block out of your way, to save $4 ... it adds up pretty quickly," Toews said. "There's the old adage 'You take care of your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.' "

Toews, a native of Saskatchewan, moved to the Twin Cities after college and stayed, although his day job, he said, is his Web-site consulting company back in Canada called GB Internet Solutions. Gasbuddy.com is something he can show off to his other clients, he said. The site makes money off banner ads, Toews said, and he's investing in more servers to improve Gasbuddy.com's response time. Toews is circumspect about his success.

"It is slightly in the black," Toews said of the site. "We're not trying to take this into a big Yahoo thing or something."

Jennifer Bjorhus can be reached at jbjorhus@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2146.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

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