Yeah, the SPoT part was fascinating. It takes them 40 days to drive to the South Pole. I guess they drag along a container that is converted in to a living quarters along with the fuel and other heavy things. 40 days... then the return trip which is supposedly quicker. ~25KM a day. No idea if they stop for the night or take shifts and keep the tractors running 24x7.

Curiously, they refill the empty bladders with air before sledding them back to McMurdo. "For safety", but the article doesn't explain why this is safer.

Now I wonder what the cost per gallon is!

With these type of operations it becomes a bit semantic and depends entirely on how you define costs and over what timespan.

You have to ship it there via tanker, store at McMurdo, and ship across the ice on special purpose vehicles. If you divide the whole cost of all that up per gallon of fuel you get a price. But if you need more, the margin cost for the next gallon is going to be an interesting one, and probably come with a free extra 9999 gallons or something.

roughly $3 dollars per gallon purchase price for 5-6 million gallons. Plus tanker costs to McM at between $25k-$70k per day for roughly 90 days. Plus the cost of the ice breaker, between $3.5-$11 million per year. [0] That's just to get it to McM and doesn't include the labor costs of the fuelies based in McM. Then you gotta get it to Pole, which is a combination of the overland traverse and lc130 tanker missions. [0] https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/bitstream/11681/243...

And then you find out you're 20 000 gallons short and you fly it in from Christchurch....