One of the guys on my shift commutes 150 miles to work, then drives 150 back the next day. We work two days out of eight (24 hour shifts), but its still a long drive.
I drive 21 miles to work, twice per eight days. My wife drives 2100 feet (yes, feet) five days a week. Thank og for those commutes.
Well, if you worked at Kent and Canterbury Hospital, you could live in Calais, France and travel about 3 miles further each way than I do every day from Venus to Carrollton (Texas). And you’d still use less fuel, because most of the route is by ferry! Not to mention the savings from having roundabouts :).
Wow, you’re very trusting.
Some stations by contract can only charge a fixed amount (profit) above what they buy the gas for - I’ve heard a figure of 7-cents (US) per gallon. These operators actually lose money as the price of gas goes up because many drivers pay with a credit card, and the operator has to absorb the credit card fee (which goes up with the sale price). Or so I’ve heard.
I think that some of the gas stations that charge higher prices for gas also give rebates for those who use the brand credit card, or point that can be redeemed for trips and such. People may be willing to pay higher prices in order to use that credit card. I know the only Shell station in the neighborhood that I lived in a few years back would charge about 15c more than the others in the area, because they were the only ones that took the Shell card.
SSG Schwartz
You can’t use the exchange rate to do these kinds of comparisons. You have to use the price relative to other goods in your economy.
We have a petrol station here in Dublin,Ireland whose publicly displayed prices are nearly twice the average.
It turns out that it’s major business is a fleet contract with the Irish police force and the Irish taxi driver’s union, which allows police and taxi drivers fill up there at substantial discounts from normal prices, let alone it’s advertised ones. The displayed prices are there because it legally has to display prices, but it doesn’t want normal Joe Soaps cluttering up the place and delaying it’s real customers.
It’s not so much the price of gasoline that’s been problematic here in the US, but rather the extravagant *rate *at which the price has been steadily climbing, especially in the past year or so. We could easily have coped with $4.20/gallon gas had the price been increasing slower over the span of several years.
I have a suspicion that “brand name gas” and advertised-fueled “our gas is better than that cheapo gas because it does THIS” can cover some of that price differential.
Convenience store chains and larger grocery stores that have gas stations (like Kroger, whom gives you a .10 per gallon discount on your gas purchases for every $100 of groceries you purchase with their Kroger card, not to mention that their listed price without the card is generally the same as normally-priced gas elsewhere) dominate my area and I suspect elsewhere too. They of course rely on retail purchases to fund their existence.
Shell, BP, Exxon, Texaco, stations like those that I’ve seen have a brand name, advertise the quality of their gasoline versus their competitors, are a distribution arm for their company that actually extracts the raw product and often are “BP Procare” stations that offer garage maintenance in addition to maybe a carwash.
Previous thread on the subject. We didn’t come up with a good answer then either. And damn it’s depressing to read that gas was $2.11 18 months ago.
I know two guys who owned a full service station many years ago, and they were always complaining that as “independents”, they were being charged a higher amount per gallon than other company operated service stations in the area. They understood that their living was in their repair business, and people bought gasoline there for pure convenience or laziness.
More recently, and currently, there’s an Exxon station not far from my home which is always 10 or more cents higher than anyplace else. They’re also the only 24/7 station open for miles and miles, so if you happen to be driving by, it’s 3AM, and you’re running low on fuel, well, guess where you’re going to buy it. Me, I try to be sleeping, or at least not driving, at 3AM 
5 years ago during the last major (or at least considered major here) spike in petrol prices the state of Illinois voluntarily chose to repeal for several months the taxes they imposed on the price of fuel in order to give its people a break. Granted at the time the price had reached what was then considered an unbearable $2.20 per USD per gallon or so.
BTW is it true that the UK is actually low enough to chare a motor fuel tax for used restaurant cooking oil if creative tinkerers try to run their cars off of it?
From this point of view, people from countries where gas is taxed at higher rates than in the U.S. (which, I assume, practically means people from anywhere other than the U.S.) are indeed at an advantage. A hike in net gas prices will lead to a lower hike in prices after taxes there, because fuel taxes are typically not ad valorem, but quantity based - there’s a fixed amount due per unit of measurement, so the tax doesn’t rise as fast as the net price.
I wouldn’t be surprised about it, tax evaders are very creative in their quest for ways to save taxes, and the authorities are just as creative in tracking them down. To give an example: In Germany, a frequent way of saving fuel taxes is using heating oil - a diesel engine will usually run on this without problems, but heating oil is far cheaper because there are lower taxes on it. As a result, legislation mandates that a color additive has to be added to heating oil, the traces of which can be detected even if heavily diluted. The authorities can check your car for these chemicals if they suspect you.
The same goes for diesel fuel for agricultural engines. These are taxed at a preferable rate (darn farmer subsidies!), and many farmers are constantly under suspicion to illegally use this fuel for their private cars as well.
Also, I believe that other societies where the price of petrol is significantly higher are structured in a way to accomodate tha price (lifestyle habits, design and efficiency of automobiles, public transportation, distances travelled) whereas the U.S. has traditionally had a lifestyle maintained around the use of cars and dependence on cheap and plentiful fuel. When the price then doubles or triples in a short span of time it’s certainly going to hurt.
$9.78 dollars, to be precise. (I’m not nitpicking, I actually wanted an excuse to show off Google’s awesome conversion tools.)
The same is done in the US.
And why shouldn’t they charge auto fuel taxes on vegetable oil used to run cars? A major purpose of fuel taxes is for use maintaining roads. If you’re running a car on public roads, you should pay taxes on your fuel.
You know how they solved that problem? By not living in fucking France.
To add to this. Certain gas stations in Canada have ethanol blended fuel, which (I think) is priced differently.
Getting back to the OP, there was always a station or two back in the early 60’s whose gas was priced outrageously higher than the other stations in the vicinity: 32.9 cents a gallon vs. 29.9.
My dad (who sold tools to these guys) explained it thus: The owner made his money doing the mechanical repairs, and would rather not sell gas as it did not fill his pockets with coin the way that repairing vehicles did.
By the early 70’s, when the gas shortage hit, this one mechanic just pulled his pumps out completely. He’s still repairing vehicles today.
Here’s a guess. Perhaps the “expensive” place is making as much profit on the gas as the “cheap” place. Margins on gas are very low AFAIK, so if the cheap place only makes $.05 profit and sells 100,000 gallons, that’s 5000 profit. The expensive place could be making .40 per gallon profit so he’d only have to sell 12,500 gallons (1/8th as much) to make the same profit.
Let me also chime in as someone who doesn’t ever consider gas prices when I buy gas. I just go to the most convenient place. Most of my fill ups are for 9 gallons or less, so a 10 or 20 cents price difference is insignificant.
J.