> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.rollingnichols.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How We Buy Diesel on the Road - URL: https://www.rollingnichols.com/how-we-buy-diesel-on-the-road/ - Published: 2026-10-04T08:55:09.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T19:33:51.000Z - Author: Phil Nichols - Tags: Life on the Road ## Using the Open Roads Fuel Discount Card In our early days of RVing with [Phyllis](https://www.rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/), our first motorhome, we stopped at normal gas stations. That's not to say we didn't stop at truck stops. We did. But when we did, we pulled around to the regular gas pumps with everybody else. > A quick disclaimer: if your RV runs on gasoline, much of what follows may not be particularly useful to you. There are plenty of fuel-discount programs available for gasoline. GasBuddy is probably one of the better-known examples, along with station loyalty programs, grocery-store discounts and credit-card rewards. If your travels are gas based, I recommend taking advantage of whatever works for you. **Every penny counts.** But once we graduated from [Phyllis](https://www.rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/) to Harriet and moved into the diesel world, my brother told me there was something else I needed: an Open Roads fuel card. He was right. ## Why Fleet Fuel Costs Less Before getting into Open Roads, it helps to understand something about diesel fuel. Large trucking companies buy enormous amounts of diesel. Because of that volume, they can negotiate prices with truck-stop chains that are often considerably better than the price you and I see advertised on the big sign along the interstate. From the truck stop's point of view, it makes sense. They would rather have a fleet consistently buying thousands or millions of gallons from them at a somewhat smaller margin than have those trucks buying from the competition. More volume means more negotiating power. The problem for smaller trucking companies is that they don't necessarily buy enough fuel on their own to have that same kind of leverage. And that's where the story behind Open Roads gets interesting. ## A Small Trucking Company in Texarkana Open Roads grew out of TSD Logistics, a trucking company in Texarkana, Texas. TSD wasn't one of the giant national carriers, and it wanted more fuel-purchasing volume without having to increase the size of its own fleet just to get it. So the company began bringing some other smaller trucking companies into its fuel program. More trucks meant more gallons, and more gallons meant more purchasing power. Then the RV community entered the picture. There was already an enormous group of diesel-powered RVs traveling the same highways and buying fuel at many of the same truck stops. RV owners were interested in gaining access to the same kind of discounted fuel arrangement. Put enough of those travelers together with the existing trucking volume and suddenly you have some serious purchasing power. Open Roads was launched in 2019\. What it essentially did was give ordinary diesel RV owners access to the kind of fleet pricing that previously had been difficult for an individual RV owner to obtain. I think that's a pretty clever idea. ## How We Set Ours Up There is one housekeeping item worth mentioning because my brother recommended it to me, and I followed his advice. Your Open Roads card has to be connected to a source of money. For us, that's a checking account, but I didn't connect it to our primary checking account. I created a separate checking account specifically for Open Roads, and nothing else accesses that account. When we're traveling, I transfer money from our regular checking account into the Open Roads account as we need it for fuel. That's not an Open Roads requirement. It's simply the way I chose to set ours up. My reasoning is pretty straightforward. If I ever lose the card, or somebody somehow figures out how to use it, I don't want that card connected directly to the account we use to pay the rest of our bills. We've used Open Roads for about three years now, and that arrangement has worked well for us. ## The Discount Isn't Always the Same We've seen Open Roads discounts all over the place. Sometimes it might only be around five cents a gallon. Other times we've seen something approaching 75 cents a gallon. You never really know until you look. Open Roads takes a small portion of the savings as its fee, and there can also be a small transaction fee depending on the fuel location. We don't spend much time worrying about that. What we're interested in is the actual price we're going to pay for diesel. And that's where the Open Roads app comes in. ## The App Is Part of the System Open Roads has a companion application that we keep on the phone. It's actually not a bad little app. You can look along your route and see the truck stops participating in the Open Roads program. More importantly, it shows you the current discounted price available at each location. That means we aren't simply looking for a truck stop. We're deciding which truck stop makes the most sense that day. We can look farther down the road and see that diesel might be considerably cheaper 50 or 100 miles ahead. Since we normally start thinking about fuel somewhere around half a tank, we generally have the flexibility to make that choice. I would much rather choose where we're going to buy fuel than wait until Harriet tells me I have to. ## There's Also a Community Behind It One thing I didn't expect when we started using Open Roads was the community that's developed around the program. There is a very active Open Roads group on Facebook, and Lisa follows it much more closely than I do. She gets a lot of useful information there. People ask questions about particular fuel stops, problems they've had using the card, changes in the program, how something works or what somebody experienced at a particular location. Usually somebody has an answer the same day. That's particularly useful with RV travel because sometimes the question isn't simply whether a station sells diesel. You might want to know what the entrance is like, whether somebody with a large motorhome has been there recently, or whether something unusual is happening at that location. **The app gives us the data. The community gives us the experience.** Both can be useful. ## Using the Card When we arrive at a participating truck stop, we go where the trucks go. The commercial diesel lanes are normally around back, away from the passenger-car pumps. Sometimes the Open Roads card works directly in the pump. Sometimes it doesn't and we have to walk inside. Either way, it's not a big deal. If the pump starts asking whether the card is debit or credit, the safest answer is usually to go inside and have it processed as a fleet card. There is another thing that can be confusing the first time you use it. While we're pumping diesel, the pump may show the normal retail price. That's also the price you'll see on the big sign out by the highway, and it can make you wonder where your discount went. Don't panic. That's not necessarily what you're actually going to pay. A day or two later, we receive the transaction information from Open Roads showing the fuel purchase, the negotiated price, the discount and the applicable fees. So although the pump may look like you're paying the big number on the sign, the final transaction reflects the Open Roads price. ## The Bigger Benefit May Not Be the Discount Saving money is nice. But one of our favorite things about moving from [Phyllis](https://www.rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/) to Harriet has very little to do with the price of diesel. It's the truck lanes. With [Phyllis](https://rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/?ref=rollingnichols.com), I would maneuver the motorhome through the same fuel islands being used by cars and pickups. And remember, we were also towing our Chevy Colorado behind us. Even with a smaller motorhome, that could get stressful. Someone parks where you need to swing. Someone pulls in front of you. You get lined up with the pump and suddenly realize getting out is going to be considerably more interesting than getting in was. You don't have many options when you've got a vehicle attached behind you that you can't simply back up. Now we pull Harriet around to the commercial truck lanes. Those lanes were designed for equipment our size. Harriet and Vern together are [about 65 feet long](https://www.rollingnichols.com/driving-65-feet/), and suddenly that's not unusual. The lanes are wide, the approaches are wide, and the exits are designed for trucks. The stress level dropped markedly. That alone is worth something. ## Then There Are the Pumps This sounds like a little thing until you're standing there filling a big diesel tank. The commercial truck lanes use high-flow diesel pumps, and they move fuel considerably faster than what we were accustomed to dealing with at ordinary fuel pumps. Harriet carries roughly 100 gallons of diesel. If you're putting 50, 60 or 70 gallons into the tank, pump speed suddenly becomes something you care about. What sounds like a minor convenience makes a noticeable difference. ## It Changed the Way We Fuel We originally got Open Roads because my brother told me it would save us money buying diesel. And it does. But after using it for several years, I wouldn't say the discount is the only reason we continue using it. We can look ahead on the app, see participating truck stops along our route, and know what our price should be before we get there. Then we can pull Harriet and Vern into a fuel lane that was actually designed to handle something 65 feet long. **The discount is nice.** **Not having to thread 65 feet of motorhome and pickup through the gas pumps may be even nicer.** Which brings us back to something we mentioned in our [Buc-ee's story](https://www.rollingnichols.com/buc-ees-the-roadside-stop-we-rarely-pass/). We stop at Buc-ee's all the time, but we just don't normally buy Harriet's diesel there. For lunch, snacks, a walk around and whatever Buc-ee's-branded thing we didn't know we needed? That's another matter entirely. [Open Roads - Discount Fuel Program - TSD LogisticsOpen Roads![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fd/23/fd2306e5-5c40-45cc-8a69-e15a5f96c86f/content/images/icon/favicon-0b60356a-e6d8-491f-9a8f-48e6c71b4eb3.png)TSD Logistics![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fd/23/fd2306e5-5c40-45cc-8a69-e15a5f96c86f/content/images/thumbnail/OpenRoads-Facebook-Header2-be9324b8-aea6-447a-94c9-f197b2d43d79.jpg)](https://www.tsdlogistics.com/services/fuel-program/?ref=rollingnichols.com) > If You Want to Try Open Roads > > If you travel in a diesel RV and think Open Roads might make sense for you, the application process is handled directly through Open Roads. > > They’ll walk you through setting up the account, choosing your payment method, and getting the EFS fuel card. > > You can learn more or apply through the [**Open Roads Personal / RV Fuel Program**](https://www.myopenroads.com/personal-rv/?ref=rollingnichols.com). > > As with anything involving fuel prices and fees, I would check their current terms when you apply. Programs like this can change over time.