Everyone has a different idea of how much you should drive in a day and when you should fuel up. This is a personal subject. What is your tolerance and stamina for driving? How quickly do you want to get where you're going? Are you a "let's just get there" kind of person or a "let's enjoy the journey" one? Are you comfortable using truck stops, fueling up among the big tractor trailers?
There are a few major factors that influenced our strategy.
- We don't like towing or arriving at night.
- We'd prefer not to fuel up while hitched up to the Airstream.
- Retail stations generally advertise cheaper prices for diesel than truck stops.
The rules of thumb we developed account for all these. First, we try to keep our travel days to less than 250 miles. This means we can leave our campground after a leisurely breakfast and still arrive at the next one in daylight. This distance is also well within the range of our truck, so we rarely have to fuel up with the trailer attached. The third point, fuel prices, we mitigated by getting a diesel fleet discount card through TSD Logistics' Open Roads discount fuel program. Sometimes this gives us access to the cheapest price around, and it sure is nice filling the tank quickly at the high-volume pumps in the truck lanes. But I still find it easier to pull up to a retail station without the Airstream in tow. All in all this is working out pretty well for us.