Why it exists
The gap was on the same road, eleven kilometres apart
Danielle Lemay drives Highway 11 between North Bay and Huntsville twice a week, all year, in a car that takes 45 litres when the light comes on. Winter adds about a litre per hundred kilometres to the trip: the block heater, the idling at the school, the snow tires.
For two winters she filled at the first station past the junction, because it was on the way and the sign was lit. It was also, she found out later, the most expensive stop on the road. The station in town, eleven kilometres further, sat between four and eleven cents lower depending on the week.
A cheap price from this morning is not a price. It is a rumour with a number attached.
What changed was not the price. It was knowing the time. The board at the junction is a manual panel, and the number on it can be from the morning. The app carried the report time next to the figure, so a price seen two hours ago could be treated as a price seen two hours ago rather than as the truth.
She now fills in town on the way back, when the tank is low enough to make the stop worth it, and uses the junction station only when the app shows it has come down. Nothing about the drive changed. The decision simply moved from the sign to the screen, where the time was written down.
