The high gas prices made him do it!

[Strazos]

As an afterthought, isn't fuel in FL expensive?

[HaemishM]

The only gas station owners I vilify are the assholes who will and do gouge, and yes, there are plenty of them out there.

No, the real cocksuckers in the gas/oil game are the suppliers (the shitheels who pay people to dig it out of the ground) like OPEC and the distributors (who are the ones really setting the prices). The retail sellers? They are paying mostly for the summer homes of the first two in the chain.

And from what I understand about the oil industry, some grades of oil are not suitable for gasoline production or are lower quality, which is why you have different prices for oil based on where it's dug up.

[TheWalrus]

  Gas is also shipped in water blocks   [water]gas[water].  Higher quality fuel comes from the portion furthest from the water. Which is why you may occasionally hear people bitching about their car running like shit because they didn't want to pay the extra 4 cents a gallon to buy a decent quality fuel.

 Useless anecdote follows.

 Guy got towed in one weekend. Car would turn over, but not start. Did routine tests found his fuel pump was bad. In the course of replacing the pump, come to find out he had replaced fuel pumps in his two other vehicles as well. All of them were less than five years old. As he babbled on further and noticed our sign board with the price of our fuel, (Texaco at the time, Shell now. I miss Texaco.) he mentioned that after searching low and high, he had found the lowest priced gas in all of Seattle. He left still not being able to wrap his brain around the fact that he'd be saving himself money by buying better fuel. Some people you just can't reach.

[Yegolev]

I took a dance class or two, and I did it because it was required for my major.  Mostly girls.  It was cool.

Oddly enough, the class was about a 50/50 split between guys and girls, with most of the guys being football players (I have no idea why there were so many of them).

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport.  At my school, we weren't allowed to mingle with the athletes.  That was probably for the best.

My truck still rolls around while I feed it 87 octane.  15.5 mpg sucks balls.  On the positive side, prices have stabilized at something like $2.78 for the low-end flavors at places like QuikTrip and RaceTrac and presumably Sam's Club.  This will change once the gas tax is reimplemented, but I can't worry about it since I can't stockpile fuel.

[Strazos]

Oddly enough, the class was about a 50/50 split between guys and girls, with most of the guys being football players (I have no idea why there were so many of them).

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport. 

No, I meant that I don't know why there were that many football players in my particular section. There were about 10-12 guys, with 8-9 being football players.

[Ironwood]

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport. 

No.  It's really not.

[Llava]

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport. 

No.  It's really not.

Word.

[Yegolev]

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport. 

No.  It's really not.

My joke is buried under your joke now.  Happy?

[Bunk]

Since this started about gas - be happy with your prices my American friends. Gas in Vancouver today, in USD, = $3.85 a gallon.

Most stations go up on down on the same kind of schedule, you just need to pay attention to the patterns. Never wait to fill up after work heading in to a long weekend. Late at night on Sundays I can usually get my gas for about $.10/litre less than it will be on Monday morning.

[Ironwood]

You should watch football sometime, it's an interesting sport. 

No.  It's really not.

My joke is buried under your joke now.  Happy?

Might be, if I were joking.

The Wife is the Football fan in my family.  It makes being a Scottish Male, er, uncomfortable at times...

[Pococurante]

Try being a Texas Male with no interest in televised sports in a state where the women quote better stats than most hardcore male enthusiasts.

[Yegolev]

I feel for you guys.  I suppose I am exceptionally talented at ignoring things I don't want to see or hear.  When my wife is watching football, chances are that my mind is in a completely different time zone than my body.

[Johny Cee]

Heh, back on topic - Gas Prices at the Station:

This is info I've gleaned from working with clients who own convience stores or chains.  I'm not 100% sure this is universal, or if it's just the arrangement some distributors have.

Gas is delivered regularly at the store.  Gas is tracked at the pump.  The supplier bills the store regularly (every couple weeks or every month) for sales at the pump using some kind of weighted average price,  as sales happen and with fully updated cost information.  The supplier also caclulates the various state and federal sales, excise, and highway use taxes,  and will forward payments to the appropriate state/federal government.

The gas in the ground isn't actually the property of the station owner.  It's more like inventory held in consignment.  This means that bumps in gas costs show up almost immediately for station owners.

Since most operations now run on a "Just in Time" inventory/supply system,  this means large increases in the price of gas are reflected almost immediately in the cost of gas to the station owner.  Since Katrina fucked up so many refineries, it caused serious Short Term crimps in the system.

Haemish is right,  the gouging really only takes place when the station owner is slow to move their prices down.  I would imagine in most cases this pretty much offsets losses station owners take in the lag between the price hikes in the cost of supply vs. sales to the final consumer when costs are increasing.  Price gouging when prices are declining should only be a problem where there are very few competitors.

The benefits in the "Just in Time" system are that distributors don't need to maintain as many of the large tank farms to hold a few weeks supplies.  With comparable environmental benefits (less gas sitting in old and rusting tanks, causing potential environmental remediation lawsuits) and less loss of inventory,  also less need for large amounts of cash tied up in security deposits and what not.

Again, I'm not 100% on this.  I quite frankly never had too much desire to learn about the nuances of the petroleum supply business....

[Pococurante]

There's no such thing as "gouging" in a true supply/demand market.  Only rational and irrational pricing.

I'd green-text the above but a bunch of rainbow-lovers had to go and ruin a good thing... ;-)

[TheWalrus]

Gas is delivered regularly at the store.  Gas is tracked at the pump.  The supplier bills the store regularly (every couple weeks or every month) for sales at the pump using some kind of weighted average price,  as sales happen and with fully updated cost information.  The supplier also caclulates the various state and federal sales, excise, and highway use taxes,  and will forward payments to the appropriate state/federal government.

The gas in the ground isn't actually the property of the station owner.  It's more like inventory held in consignment.  This means that bumps in gas costs show up almost immediately for station owners.

 To be honest I have no idea how outfits like AM/PM work, this may very well be the case. For small family outfits like mine, that are owned, not franchises, it happens differently. The supplier faxes us on a daily basis what the price of fuel is. When we get a drop, we get charged whatever the rate is at the time of the drop.   I do find it absolutely amazing that we almost always seem to get a drop right after the price goes up, and right before they go down. This costs us literally thousands of dollars when prices do the roller coaster thing they have going now. The only way to make this up is by running a convenience store on the side, or like we do, have a shop attached.