I decided to give the calculator a test run, as I just took a drive to Auburn, Washington, for work, and I know what I spent on gas for that little adventure. The first thing I found was that if your car is older than 1999, you won’t find it in the drop-down menu.

Cost to Drive couldn’t find my little red truck in the system, so I entered it free-form style, including the MPG and size of the tank.  It told me I could expect to spend $25.75 on that trip, which was just about right. But I could have figured that out in my head using the information it had me type in.

The builders of the site call the process “galculating,” which is what I did while stuck in traffic on Interstate 5 yesterday. “If I sit here for x number of minutes burning y gallons of gas, how much time and money am I losing?” There’s nothing like a traffic jam to make word problems seem fun.

Cost to Drive may help you decide if a trip is worth it, or it may help you compare the cost of gas to the cost of a train ticket, but the math is pretty easy. I firmly believe you could figure this stuff out without a dedicated web site, but if your brain is having a difficult day, then Cost to Drive may help.