The same thing happened 2 or 3 years ago during a hurricane. The rumor was that there was going to be a shortage of gas. Everybody lined up at all the stations running most of the stations out for the day. The next day everything was back to normal. People panic too easy making things much worse than they are.
If you really want to blame someone, blame the futures market system. I owned a restaurant/gas station for 20 years and it was nearly impossible to make money on gasoline.
For example if I had a 10K gallon tank that needed filling, and gas was retailing for $3 a gallon, it would cost me $2.94 per gallon. (2% profit margin) So that tank would cost me $29,400 to fill. If I sold every oz of it I would have $30,000 to buy the new load of gas...
If the wholesalers went up overnight like they have in B'ham this week, I couldn't fill the tank. If the wholesale price went up a buck it would now take $39,400 to fill. If I was lucky I could jack my margin up to $.08 per gallon at the most. Then the next week when the price dropped back I had gas in the ground that cost me more wholesale than I could sell it for retail. (I literally made more selling a Coke and a brownie than I did selling a tank of gas.)
So I sympathize for that dude that went out and raised the price 50 cents while people were in line, even though I don't like it any more than you guys. He surely thought he was about to have to pay at least 50c more per gallon to replace his inventory.
When I sold the gas station guess what I did for a living for over a year.
Traded oil futures. And it was a heck of a lot easier than retail gas sales. But it sucks as a living, because you aren't adding value to anything or helping anyone. Now I love the poor people trying to make a living providing goods and services, and hate the bast#*#*s up on the computers trading futures contracts. They make money whichever way the price goes, up or down, and laugh at the pumps, because they made $500,000 bettting on a hurricane's effect on the gas supply chain.
I wish the world would go back to cost plus, and get rid of speculative markets altogether.
Yeah, i know...rant rant rant. Sorry. But I feel better getting it off my chest
Great post Sam.
Senior Member
Originally Posted by wrxdrvr
$4.99 sounds good to me too.here in Canada, in BC where I live it's $1.48/L = $5.62/US gallon, for premium it's $ 1.63L = $6.19/US gallon.
I was wondering if there was anybody from Canada in this forum.
Im in Alberta, and fuel is 1.419, and one is selling at 1.359.
Some stations north of Atlanta went to $5.20 a gallon & ran out. Average around here is $4.99
Drill baby Drill !!!!
If the hurricane did have anything to do with the gas running short, isn't that what the reserves are for? We have a Swifty station here that always are lined up with customers. They jacked their prices up to 4.29 while everyone else stayed at 3.99. The last two days nobody has stopped at swifty, lol. Serves them right.
I am in Tennessee.
For the most part all of the gas stations that where out where going up again by the next day. A small local BP near my house is still out of gas. They put little carboard pieces over each of the pumps with frowning faces on them.
I guess what I find so odd is that all the gas stations had different prices. I found later on after I posted this that some gas stations where selling gas for $3.99, $4.19, $4.49 and $4.99 all at the same time of day. Something seems really weird to me that one can afford to handle the $3.99 while others are a full dollar over that. Odd on one of because some of these gas stations get their gas from the same place even though they have different names.
In my state at least the EPA has lifted a ban on some of their restrictions on clean gas. Still no price drop. It has actually gotten over $5 in Knoxville (the largest city around me).
In the paper it said that there was some sort of state comission that was looking into the response of the local gas stations. Like I said the price differances are really off. I personally think some of these places are price gouging. All of them are doing it now.
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