Haven’t checked our area lately, but taking a small tank to the service station to get filled was at least $2.99 last I saw, and the delivered price for the home tanks was $2.61 last winter, haven’t needed any since Doug
I do not have propane but I ask around. The lowest I have heard is $1.69 a gallon. I have also heard as much as $4-6 per gallon per gallon from one of the big national chains, they also have the worst customer service and do not mess with appliances. I’m more in tune with how many Kw I use and how many junk fees are tacked on to my electric bill these days. I have yet to figure out how to power my air conditioner on wood.
I just had our small LP tank filled and it only cost $4.29/gallon. We only use it for cooking. My neighbor across the road who heats with LP gets it for less than $2/gallon.
Wholesale propane has been sub $1 all summer, retail has been around $1.8-2 locally. I filled my tank and pre purchased enough to carry me through the year. If I could find a 1000 gallon tank to purchase for a reasonable price I would. Locally I can rent for 50 years for what it would cost me to purchase and set a tank for.
Thinking about it, I'll bet that to get the price of .99 a gallon, there may be a 200 gal minimum. I think I'll call just to find out.
Don’t confuse the Lease price, with total cost of leasing. Might be different where you are, but around here, if you lease a tank, ONLY the company you lease from will fill that tank. The price of the propane will be higher than what you can get by shopping around. We don’t use enough propane to get the ROI as quickly, but we talked to a lot of people in our area, and for those that use more, the price difference between open market, and leased tank prices, put the pay off term at 18 months, a few even less. If you have several people in a relatively small area that use propane, if you can get some to order at the same time, you can often get a group discount. As I mentioned, only the company that you leased the tank from is the only one that will fill it, that can be a problem beyond just price, if you run low, they may not be able to service you soon enough, that happened to one of my Wife’s Friend/Client, they had about two weeks worth left, and had always been able to get a delivery within a week, they called for a delivery, and were told it will be at least two weeks before they could get out to them. Well it was longer than that, quite a bit, they went 10 days with heavy snow for much of it with no heat, hot water or stove. When we bought our tanks they bought one from us, and will never lease again. We bought our tanks to fuel a 20 KW home Standby Generator. We have been experiencing Longer and More Frequent outages than in the past, and that trend seems to be getting worse. We also switched to a gas stove when we remodeled our kitchen, so our use isn’t that great, until the generator kicks in, it burns approximately 4 gallons/hour at full load, and 2 gallons/hour at half load, I don’t know if the fuel use drops much at less than half load. Half load or less usually covers most of our needs, especially if we limit hot water usage while on standby power, and we have the power available if needed, and sizing larger than required load increases generator life significantly, and we got a smokin deal on the one we bought. We were in the middle of the “Supply Chain Issues “ when we went to buy our tanks, locally the 120 gallon/420# tanks had previously been $800/tank, when we tried to buy them they had literally doubled to $1,600/tank, IF you could Find any. The one vendor that was occasionally able to get some charged $150/tank for delivery, and you had to drive over an hour each way from us and pay in cash, before he would load them and deliver, wouldn’t even accept payment on delivery. I searched online, and Menard’s still offered the tanks at $800, but the catch was, their closest stores were either Cheyenne or Casper, WY, quite the drive from Mt Hood, 50 miles east of the cesspool known as Portland. We ordered 8 tanks, in February 2022, and with the supply chain issues, the order kept getting delayed, and they weren’t delivered to the store until the end of June, and we did a Road-trip to pick them up. the Jeep and trailer both got lifted after this pic Yep, I’m a trucker, and the “E Track” shows it Yep, all eight fit in my 6x10 enclosed trailer, but the E Track came in handy for not only securing the tanks, but being able to deck above them for more storage capacity We intended to keep two tanks, and sell the other six, we ended up deciding to keep three tanks, so that we would have the extra run time for the generator, in case I was out of town during an extended power outage, my Wife’s lungs were damaged by covid, and she is dependent on an oxygen concentrator, so the generator isn’t just a Luxury for us. By buying and picking up the tanks, we were able to sell them for $1,500/tank with delivery included, we sold the five, and got some calls on the sixth, but I had decided to keep it. As it was selling the five tanks paid for all eight tanks, our fuel, food, DEF and an oil change. I earn a lot of hotel points through work, and those covered our lodging for all eight nights on the road. We could have round tripped Cheyenne in three or four days if that was all we wanted to do, but we took the “Scenic Route” and spent 3 nights in Moab, UT with one day playing with the Jeep in Arches NP. and went through Vail and Denver, CO. Ended up being a very Enjoyable trip, and only cost me the week of vacation time. Sorry to go so far off topic, but Leasing a propane tank, has hidden costs, and should be looked at closely before signing a lease agreement. Doug.
Just looked up and my company says $3.95/gal. Yes, I lease their tanks. But last fill up was a year ago and was 114 gallons - it would take me longer for an ROI on owning tanks than the ROI on my solar set up (which is over 10 years). Realistically, I'd probably have to replace the tanks before any ROI would be realized. After writing the above, I went and checked the state site that tracks averages for HHF, and actually my price is even better than I thought against the average price (which only tracks for those who use at least 1,000 gals).
I use about 150 gallons a year and my latest price about a week ago was 3.40 using their tank. They deliver every other month.
The current supply company for my propane doesn’t charge me any rent for my tank. They are the 4th company to buy the original propane business & apparently my tank ownership has been lost in the shuffle. The truck was here about a month ago but didn’t add any propane, I will call them in September & have them stop by at their convenience for the yearly fill. Usually a person find 250gallon - 500 gallon propane tanks at farm auctions, occasionally you will see a 1000 gallon tank. The benefit of the lease/rent tanks is that the company eats any repairs & paints the tank’s on regular basis. I haven’t checked on prices lately.
US Propane Retail Price is at a current level of 2.394, down from 2.412 last week and down from 2.671 one year ago. Basic Info. Iowa Residential Propane Price is at a current level of 1.532, up from 1.53 last week and down from 1.929 one year ago. This is a change of 0.13% from last week and -20.58% from one year ago.
Two weeks ago I had my 500 gal. tank topped off. Because I own my own tank (purchased in the fall of 2014 for $700) I pay a dime a gallon less. With hydro heat in the basement, water heater and stovetop, I usually go through approx. 600 gallons a year. This trip was $1.49 a gallon, I'd love to have paid less but in my case, building a rapport with the company is important.
The local extortion outfit has a sign on the front of their building with the current fuel prices. They took the propane price down because too many customers were complaining they were getting charged almost double the advertised price. Thankfully I have little use for propane anymore what I use I can get at a hardware or gas supply place.
Locally used 500 gallon tanks sell for $1500-2000 plus installing costs, new is $3500. Tank rent is $75 per year, propane price is the same for owned and rented tanks. Annual I check the main suppliers to see if buying or switching suppliers makes sense.
