Buy home heating oil NOW for this winter

Our furnace burns fuel oil. For those of you not familiar with it, it's the same stuff that trucks burn. It's dyed a different color and taxed differently but it's the same stuff.

I *ALWAYS* top off my tank in May or June so I start the winter with a full tank. Usually the price is less because no one's heating their house.

I paid $5.899 per gallon and I was happy to get it.

According to our local paper, several of the smaller fuel oil firms in our area are REFUSING to fill tanks over the summer, even for longtime customers. They want to keep their stock for the winter.

Some of them are refusing to accept new customers.

If you heat your house with something that has to be delivered like fuel oil, coal, wood pellets, or the like and it can be stored, do it now.
You don't know what this winter will be like.

I've already informed the family that I'm setting the thermostat lower: from 64 degrees during the day to 63. I might have to go lower, depending on the price I see.

By the way, although home heating oil and diesel fuel at the gas station are not the same price, they do tend to move together. When you see the gas pump price rise, assume your home heating oil prices are rising too.

mountainmoma's picture

Why delay for something this critical ? Heating supplies should be gotten right at the beginning of summer, or earlier.

It is the same with Firewood. Sometimes you want to get firewood even earlier to make sure it realy is seasoned and dry, in the spring. And same idea, buy it when there is not a run on the supply.

David Trammel's picture

Teresa, what are the prices of heating oil now?

The price seems to have temporarily dropped.
A quick search claims it's just shy of $3 a gallon.
But I don't believe it.

I do know that as the season progresses, the price nearly always rises.
Who knows how high it will go this winter?