You read the subject correct – gas strikes generally don’t work, and here’s a short rant on why:

Every year when gas prices spike for some yet-unknown reason (other than profit), I get emails, SMS messages, IM messages and whatnot talking about how the world/nation/state/city is attempting to hold a “Fuel Strike” on a specific day.

The instructions generally are simple:

“Don’t buy gas on <day>”

The problem with this kind of strike, is that they never work. The short timespan is simply to short to have any impact, since people will storm gas stations the day before (and, potentially, the day after) in order to get their fill of gasoline.

One way in which a fuel strike might work (emphasis on might), is by prolonging the duration of the strike. I imagine if we all refused to fill fuel for a month or so, it might have some sort of impact (negative or positive, who knows).

However, we Americans are too in love with our gas-guzzling vehicles to last a long enough amount of time to have any impact.

I have attempted to solve the fuel consumption (and thus expense) issue for me by riding both my bicycle and my motorcycle to the extent that I can. Bicycle is near-free (food costs increase with the metabolism increase), and my motorcycle gets about 4 times the gas mileage that my truck does. (It has other drawbacks, though.)

So please, don’t bother holding a one-day strike (of any kind, actually) – it won’t accomplish anything, and you’ll be out time and energy best spent some other way.