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."
(but that's not the point of the entry, I know)
We all know this story is bull.
Every time there is a rainstorm the gas stations gouge you.
Every time a local soldier dies in Iraq the gas stations gouge you a few cents more.
Then Bush cut measurement enforce ment so in many areas you only get 7/8 of a gallon anyways.
Around my area a gas station owner was finally sued for having standard and "premium" when it was all the same gas. it is estimated he did this for 40 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7306967.stm
So in debating whether or not to feel sorry, you need to know who the owner is of a particular station. You can't tell by the name brand.
so could the inflated prices be fought using the same principal? cap the price at some level where it's profitable for producers/refiners, but speculation/inflated prices end at a preset point.
i hope that makes sense...
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.
No, I tend to think the oil companies are making a fortune. I usually forget individual people sometimes own the stations.
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.