Richmond, VA to Panama City, FL: distance, drive time and fuel cost

The route runs from Richmond, VA to Panama City, FL, crossing 4 state lines — Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Speed limits and everyday driving rules are set state by state, so what is posted can change as you cross. At roughly 12 hr 47 min behind the wheel this is at the outer edge of what most people should attempt in a day. Splitting it over two days, with a stop somewhere in the middle, is the safer plan — and often barely slower once fatigue is counted.

There are 5 towns of any size close to the line between the two cities, the first being Durham, NC at about 157 miles in. That matters mostly for where you can stop: on a 12 hr 47 min drive the useful question is not how far it is but where the fuel, food and daylight run out.

The route also crosses a time-zone boundary, so the clock at the far end is 1 hour behind the one you set off with. Arrival times booked at the destination are in local time, which is the part people get wrong.

Flying this route saves about 8 hr 53 min door to door once airport time is counted, so the drive is a choice rather than the obvious option — worth it if you want the car at the other end, or if you would rather see the 805 miles than sit them out.

805 miles at 25.4 miles per gallon is about 31.7 gallons, which comes to roughly $100 at $3.15 a gallon. Split between four people that is about $25 each, which is the comparison worth making before you look at a flight price rather than after. Two figures in that sentence are assumptions rather than facts about your trip: the price per gallon, reviewed 2026-08, and the consumption, which is a US fleet average. Both are published with the rest of the method under fuel cost assumptions.

The size of that assumption is easy to see on this route. A fifty-cent move in the pump price either way changes the total by about $15.85 — so read $100 as the middle of a range from roughly $84 to $116, not as a quote. A car that does noticeably better or worse than 25.4 mpg shifts it further, and neither figure includes tolls, which are charged on a good deal of the interstate network in the northeast and on individual bridges and tunnels elsewhere. Nothing on this page knows which tolls apply to a particular route, so none are counted.

For the same reason the 282 kg of CO₂ this drive implies is arithmetic on the fuel rather than a measurement: 31.7 gallons of gasoline at the EPA's figure of 8.89 kg per gallon. It is useful for comparing this route against flying it, or against a longer way round, and not useful as an absolute number.