51,000 Transponders
Friday, a dozen or so miles north of Yeehaw Junction on the Florida Turnpike, the Purple Whale rolled through its fifty first thousandth mile.
For the first time, in the dozens of times we’ve used the Florida Turnpike to travel to or from Palm City, we didn’t have to stop at a toll booth. We motored right on through, only slowing a bit. After listening to BIL Paul tell us of all the advantages of using SunPass for so long we finally decided to take the plunge.
There are two kinds of SunPass devices, a sticker for you window for $5 or a transponder for $20. We went with the more expensive kind for two reasons, the transponder has suction cups and can be transferred to different vehicles (and we have two) and Paul said that it would come with your twenty bucks back loaded on the device. Well, at least we got that portability thing. Maybe brother-in-law bought his transponder real early in the process or during a special promotion to get the $20 back on the unit at purchase time, we did not.
We did see, in our two trips using it, the other benefit he mentioned, saving a percentage off the cash toll price. On our trip home the toll using the SunPass was $11.04 instead of the usual $13.50. Plus we had saved another three bucks on a round trip to Miami. This means we are over a quarter of the way towards “saving” money using SunPass.
