ST. CLOUD, Minn. — This holiday weekend, while some motorists are curtailing vacation plans because of high gas prices, Christine Blount is gleefully mapping out all the places she'll go in her 1989 Bronco II.

The grocery store. Friends' homes for a cup of coffee. Maybe all the way to Minneapolis, nearly 70 miles, to see a movie or do a little shopping — despite the fact that her vehicle gets 12 miles to the gallon.


After all, Blount is paying only 89 cents a gallon for gas. It costs her just $20 to fill the tank.

Blount is one of 9,600 members of First Fuel Banks, a family-run business here where customers have been pre-buying gasoline in bulk on the commodities market for more than two decades. It is billed as the only company of its kind in the country; members use debit cards to pump gas at First Fuel's six filling stations in the St. Cloud area and in nearby Monticello, Minn.

Nearly 300 of its customers pay less than $1 a gallon. Several thousand who bought into the system in the last few years are paying less than $2.