I don’t see that. It’s not like gas was going to run out entirely. The only issue is the lines, and the only thing that matters is whether the problem is likely to get better or worse.
I assumed that the problem - which is clearly temporary in nature - is a lot more likely to get better. And a few days after the storm, there was certainly no reason to assume it would get worse. Based on that assumption it makes no sense at all to wait a definite hour or more today when there’s a possibility that you can wait less a few days from now. If it doesn’t get better, well then you can always get on line two days from now.
[Actually in my case the one who would have had to wait on line was my teenage daughter, who my wife had warned to get gas before the storm for the car primarily driven by her, and who was slack about it. I needled her a bit about how she was going to have to wait on line if it came to that, but I didn’t expect it to, and thankfully it didn’t. :)]
Well F-P, as I posted elsewhere, you’re in a good position of neither being desperate at the present moment, nor being prone to panic for fear of impending desperation. Plenty of people (not just in NJ) ride much closer to the line of disaster and are also more prone to panic, the two of which may be correlated.
I’m with you, FTR. I have relatively low need for gas, and have not refueled since early last Wednesday (when there was no line) on the assumption that by the time I’d have to refill - some time next Monday perhaps - the crisis will be over and things will be back to normal or close to it. I do not really fear that I will run out of gas; alternatively, I feel that if come Sunday afternoon there is still a shortage, it will be a lesser one than it is now, and that my wait will be relatively shorter than would be if I tried to fill up today 4-5 days ahead of my necessity point.
A portable generator won’t hack it. Pumps work on 3-phase current and need a lot of power so you need an industrial strength generator.
Even if you manage to get one in short order, connecting it to the station isn’t going to be easy. Generators of that size need several permits and an electrical engineer to design the whole wiring, plus all the work of actually installing the new wiring.
This will take weeks or even months to do, plus some serious money.
Then the profit thing. Gas stations do not have unlimited capacity. Normally they refuel every 2-3 days max, but if there is a constant line of cars out there, they can run dry in less than 6 hours. Since refueling trucks cannot be sent, the gas station has sold 2 day’s worth of gas in 6 hours and then has to wait for another truck to come. If the truck comes two days later then you are back at square one.
So no, installing a generator doesn’t make economic sense.
With trucks that have pumps on them or use a gas-powered pump to pump the gas into the tanker truck. How do you think fire pumper trucks work? Do you think they have a long extension cord they plug in at every fire? And, since people are bitching about not getting gas, apparently passable roads aren’t a problem. Especially since people seem to think that you can get other tanker trucks in there.
As Dog80 points out, it’s not easy or cheap to set up a gas station to be “disaster hardened” and ROI is potentially very weak.
Kimballkid: Justify to the owners of the company keeping a fleet of more expensive, harder to maintain, pumper trucks around “just in case”.
In the end it all comes down to this: if it were economically and operationally viable and advantageous for the fueling companies to do the various things that are suggested of them – not just physical plausibility: they are not charities, relief agencies, nor public utilities – they would then do it. The do not have a mandate to do any of that.
Are you aware that almost every single gas station (I would say every one, but someone would come in with a counterexample) is an independently owned and operated franchise? Is your hypothetical pumper truck supposed to cut a check to Bob’s Citgo when it takes all of his gas and delivers it to Mel’s Citgo two blocks over?
Who’s gonna pay for these pumper trucks?
The wholesaler? Why would they care? They got their money when Bob bought his gas from them.
Citgo? They get their money when Bob pays his franchise fees. They don’t care if he can’t sell his gas.
Bob? Supposed to fund his own inability to sell gas when the power comes back tomorrow and he’s pumped his gas out and sold it at cost to Mel down the street?
The system we have in place is obviously imperfect, but it’s what the market has settled on. It works almost all the time, and when a hurricane slides through there are shortages of usually no more than a 3 - 4 days. This one is a little much, but it’s obviously right now more of an inconvenience than a game-changer, in the context of gas availability. It would be possible to build a system that could guarantee extremely reliable access to gas regardless of conditions, but it doesn’t make sense to over-engineer it to that degree when the one we have almost always works.
FWIW I bought gas in North Jersey this morning on the way to work. There was no line (although the station was much more crowded than it would have been normally). Nobody was checking license plates.
Assuming this is a representative situation, it seems everyone I know who waited in line for gas to top off their tank did so unnecessarily. They could have just driven normally for a week.
So based on my unscientific observations, panic buying played a significant role in the shortage.
Considering that’s not what I said or even what I was thinking, I don’t have to ‘justify’ anything. Believe it or not, there are companies that normally use pumper trucks in their every day businesses. For example, when we changed the underground tanks at the station I worked at, they called the local Conoco oil jobber to pump out the remaining gas and store it for them. There was also the used oil recycler’s truck.
Since I’ve worked at a few gas stations, I’m well aware of this.
I answered the ‘pay for these pumper trucks’ question above so I’ll go on to the rest.
First off, businesses, at least around here, trade goods and services all the time. The pumper truck person could pump the gas out and haul it to Mel’s working station and in return Bob and/or Mel lets him fill his gas tank a couple times or gives him some store merchandise or something. Second, it’s not an all or nothing proposition they don’t have to pump all the gas out, they can leave some so Bob still has inventory when the power comes back on. Then all Mel needs to do is call up his wholesaler, (which is probably the same as Bob’s) and tell him to deliver the same amount pumped out to Bob and bill him for it. Apparently unlike where you are from, people and businesses around here are willing to help each other out.
I believe there are still problems with the pipelines and refineries, but I for one am happy that the odd-even restrictions started. On Friday, the first day of the restrictions in NYC , I waited only 20 minutes for gas, and today there was no wait at all. When I look on gas buddy, there are a lot more stations with gas than there were a week ago, so there’s either more coming in or the panic buying was worse than I thought.
I don’t know if the procedure for preparing for a massive natural disaster is published. But, I would think preparedness for a given area would be to secure the utilities and other large industrial processes, such as refineries, to also be shut down. This is not a simple “push-button” process. It could take a day, maybe two, to properly shut-down the refinery and the same amount to bring it back up. Same for the oil pipelines in this country, you’d make to make them as safe as possible, which would mean to empty them. Once the disaster has struck, you now have to inspect and test everything to make sure it is good to go. You can’t just go and refill a pipeline with oil just hoping that its OK. Or, start refining fuel without the proper start-off procedures being followed.
Also, people have this crazy idea that recovering from something so massive is just as simple and “point-and-clicking” to divert resources. Like, as if, life is Starcraft or some other game. It takes time, it takes people, it takes money, it takes cooperation. Not all of it is available at the same time.
Just think how long and what it took to get those areas where they were in the first place.