‘Shop around for fuel’

Wagga’s David Brand has been racking up the kilometres driving in the Riverina and price differences between highway servos and ones in town.

He said fast food chains and maintaining good toilets brought a lot of people into highway servos.

“My advice to anyone is to support your independents and go into town where it will be cheaper,” Mr Brand said.

Mr Brand said there was a difference of up to 17 cents between Gundagai and Wagga, and 33 cents between Gundagai and Melbourne.

“If you’ve got a car full of kids, can you afford to stop at the big servos on the highway? No you can’t.”

“By going into town, any town you’ll help keep the town alive … and help the big boys wake up to themselves.”

Motorists should soon start to see some changes at the fuel bowser thanks to legal action from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission against a company monitoring prices.

The agreement between the ACCC and major petrol retailers will see motorists receiving live information on prices.

Retailers receive information 15 to 30 minutes as prices change and ACCC Rod Sims said that information would now be made available to drivers.

BP, Caltex, Woolworths and 7-Eleven received information from a company called Informed Sources.

“The ACCC believes that this will facilitate improved competition amongst petrol retailers,” Mr Sims said.

Meanwhile, the National Roads and Motoring Services Association (NRMA) said they would be keeping a careful eye out for fuel price spikes.

“There is no reason why there ought to be,” NRMA deputy president and regional director Fiona Simson said.

“World oil prices are low as is the terminal gate.

“We are not going to stand for a repeat of 12 months ago, when Sydney prices stayed low but regional prices either stayed high or crept up.

“The major companies know they can no longer get away with that,” she said.