The next time you pump gas, try to feel the pain ... of the gas station owners! Here's a report by Elizabeth Douglass and Ronald D. White of the LA Times about how gas station owners are being squeezed by high oil and gas prices:
Despite the jaw-dropping prices at the pump -- they jumped 19 cents a gallon in California to $4.43 in the last week and averaged more than $4 a gallon nationwide for the first time, the Energy Department said Monday -- service station owners aren't making the killing that motorists assume.
That's because credit card fees, the price of tanker-loads of fuel and other costs are rising so rapidly that station owners haven't been able to keep pace despite the record prices they're charging.
"People see $4 gas, and they think these retailers are making a fortune," said Ben Brockwell, a director at Oil Price Information Service, which tracks fuel prices. "The reality is these guys are being stressed to the limit."
Our cities and daily commutes are set up, as a whole to be automobile based with entire neighborhoods set up as bedroom communities miles from where one works, goes the grocery store, and even where the kids go to school.
I blame Robert Moses and his followers. But I also grew up in suburban Atlanta without sidewalks so maybe I'm a little bit bitter.
No, I tend to think the oil companies are making a fortune. I usually forget individual people sometimes own the stations.
A gas station owner has to purchase fuel in large quantities, usually about 9000 gallons at a time. He's paying maybe $3.89 per gallon = $35,010. At best, he'll gross 10 cents per gallon on that 9000 = $900. Subtract out the credit card fees and he's at $630. Then take out for electricity to run the pumps and keep the canopy lit, payroll for cashiers, etc. If someone damages a pump or hose, he's down to $0 profit. And with $35k tied up in the investment.
The "boycott the local gas station" mentality will succeed only in putting local business owners out of business and moving revenues to company-owned stores. Genius.
And if you need someone to blame, look at yourself and your own "rapacious" use of a non-renewable, polluting resource.