I took a short three hour trip to Grand Junction, Colorado and stayed in my RV for a couple of days but before I left I stopped at the local Conaco to fill up with diesel. I put $75 worth in and when I looked at my fuel gauge I was between half and three quarters full. When I left Grand Junction I went to fill up again and the pump only let me put in $75 worth of diesel. Is there a limit to how much diesel one person can buy?

The limit, if there is one, is set by the gas station. A lot of them seem to be at $75, but I've also seen $80 and $100. Also it seems more prevalent in certain states.

I've run into that...it's the station setting a limit on your credit card purchase. Sometimes the machine will allow you to run your CC again, but not always. You should be able to go inside and give them your card and they will turn the pump on so you can fill your tank, then go back inside and they will run your CC for the total purchase. You will find this at stations that do not handle OTR truckers and RV'ers as our tanks are usually larger than pickup trucks and cars.

I "think" I found a trick around this. I run the first $75 as a debit transaction, then the rest as a credit transaction. That's worked every time so far.

We ran into that a lot in our trip to the 4 corners area of the southwest last month.  One place I put $75 twice on one card and then had to switch to another card for two more charges, what a pain.  One place in Cortez, CO I saw diesel reasonable so I went and preauthorized $150 and it took $160.  The trucker places usually are not a problem or most places will preauthorize.

With our American Express, the card has to be swiped at the pump to get our *cash back* bonus... if it's swiped inside at the counter register, we do not get the credit. Irritating to say the least. So we just fuel up more often with the smaller limits.

KarenInTheWoods wrote:

---

With our American Express, the card has to be swiped at the pump to get our *cash back* bonus... if it's swiped inside at the counter register, we do not get the credit. Irritating to say the least. So we just fuel up more often with the smaller limits.

---

I haven't encountered this with our Costco American Express.  But we normally fill up at truck stops like Flying J and Loves and buying anything from them seems to be enough to get the 3% for "gasoline" instead of 1% for "everything else".