Steve Gloyd, of Marriottsville, thinks he has gas prices figured out.

He says that for $3.99 a month, you can, too.

As primary founder of the Marriottsville-based Energy Management Institute, Gloyd has been providing daily market-based research on oil prices for the wholesale market since 2000 by advising managers of large fleets of vehicles when to buy gas based on dips and rises in the oil market. On Aug. 29, the 41-year-old Gloyd, his two partners and 25 employees launched Pump Predictor, a text-messaging service for private consumers that delivers messages as often as a customer needs them on when and when not to buy gas.

Asher Epstein, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, said Gloyd's service is part of a recent trend among businesses to deliver information to customers as quickly as possible.

"There are lot of people trying to deliver real-time information to their customers, and this is another example," Epstein said Sept. 16. But success is still elusive in the early phases of this industry, Epstein added. Businesses, he said, are still figuring out how to make money out of text messaging.

"As a business model, people are still trying to make money on a large scale," Epstein said.

Christine Delise, a spokeswoman for AAA, said there are several technologies similar to Gloyd's on the market, including Triple A Mobile, which works with GPS devices, costs $9.99 a month, and provides customers with a list of gas stations and prices closest to their location.

When to buy

For $3.99 a month, Gloyd's service allows a consumer to enter five text addresses or e-mail addresses, Gloyd said. Customers then will receive daily messages telling them when prices are going up or going down, Gloyd said. If prices are expected to spike, customers will get a message telling them to buy now. But if prices are expected to go down, they will get a message telling them to wait.

The service also tells customers the average price of gas in Maryland that day.

"If the average price is $3.31 today in Maryland we'll say, 'Don't pay more than that,' " said Gloyd.

Gloyd said that high sales of his wholesale product as well as the rising prices and volatility of the oil markets this year played a part in the company's decision to release a consumer product just before Labor Day.

"It's just dominating the airwaves," he said. "We're seeing price swings eight cents a day these days; it's crazy."

Although markets have been volatile in recent days because of the effects of Hurricane Ike, gas prices started to stabilize Sept. 16 after seeing a 16-cent jump between Sept. 12 and Sept. 15, according to Delise.

Gloyd said several hundred customers are getting the service, though he declined to be more specific.

One of his customers, Ron Mickschl, a commercial fleet marketer in Minneapolis, Minn., said he's using Pump Predictor because he was impressed by the wholesale product.

"I like it," he said. "It's easy. It's on my cell phone; it's on my wife's cell phone."

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