It sucks to be a “Mom & Pop” gas station owner these days. Gas station owning isn’t as profitable as you might think (the oil company gets most of the money) and now it seems that thousands of older pumps just don’t have the ability to charge more than $3.99 per gallon — and also can’t charge more than $99 for the total sale, preventing truck and SUV owners from filling their tanks up all the way.
As many as 8,500 of the nation’s 170,000 service stations have old-style meters that need to be fixed — about 17,000 individual pumps, said Bob Renkes, executive vice president of the Petroleum Equipment Institute of Tulsa, Okla.
At Chip Colville’s Chevron station in this eastern Washington town, where men in the family have pumped gas since 1919, three stubby, gray pumps were installed when gas was less than $1 a gallon. They top out at $3.999, only 30 cents above the price of regular gas at Colville’s station.
“In small towns, where you don’t have the volume, there’s no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps,” Colville said. “It’s just not economically feasible.”
The pumps will have to be retrofitted with new meters that go up to $4.99, but experts say that this puts a lot of strain on the old pumps.
Old Gas Pumps Can’t Handle Ever-Rising Prices [Boston Herald]
(Photo: AP)
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Honestly this is just poor planning on their part. Should have bought pumps with 1-9 instead of 1-3.
@LUV2CattleCall: Yo Adam Smith – I’m at 1/2 tank; since you love high gas prices so much, will you kindly fill me up? Oh, and by the way, “supply and mother —- demand” doesn’t work particularly well when you’ve got OPEC and political wankers raising prices based on “future” issues.
I never once mentioned the idiotic gas tax cut.
Since you’re such a great freemarket capitalist, why don’t you scratch my ass with that invisible hand of yours, you ugly little troll.
@katekate:
I don’t have a good reason. I have no interest in using it. I like driving.
@buzzybee:
No, really, they don’t. The gas stations, as mentioned before, do not make their money on gasoline sales. They are generally +/- $0.03 from even per gallon.
@meadandale: “Actually, it’s the refineries not the oil companies”
Actually, Refineries do worse when prices are high, because they are so dependent on crude. When you hear about refining margins, they are referring to the difference between the price of crude and the cost to refine it. (Im oversimplifying).
THe profit really goes to the producers, which is why blaming gas stations makes no sense — especially when most majors are getting out or are out of consumer marketing of gasoline.
@winstonthorne: They are making record NET profits. CNN and other leftist media sources conveniently leave out how much revenue it took to generate that profit so someone can actually calculate a profit MARGIN.
It is more sensationalist for them to print/broadcast “Oil Companies make a record $40 billion profit!” instead of, “Oil Companies make $40 billion on $450 billion in sales”
Greeper…I agree with your statements wholeheartedly. If there is so much collusion in the market to drive up the price of oil from the oil companies…show us the proof! Vague conspiracy theories or blogs from anti-capitalist nutjobs don’t count.
Our oil prices are high due to weakness in the dollar, thanks in part to the Fed dropping the bottom out of interest rates over the past 8-9 years (this is not a new trend, btw) and investors hedging (and over-speculating) their other investments on energy. Throw in a cartel run by a bunch of terrorists, 3rd world despots and dictators (OPEC) having their hand on a large amount of the world’s oil supply, and you have a recipe for high oil prices.
What if the oil company owned cstores,enough to pump 60 percent of the gas they make. Now lets just say they make enough off of the cig and soda and lottery to pay for the stores and employees. If so they can control the price at the wholesale and at the pump driving private owners out of busness. So profets for the oil companys are up as much as 300percent since 2000 is not accidental.
@trk182: Ever been on a long road trip through some backwoods towns? A lot of these small towns have gas stations that are the only ones around for miles, and they are still using these pumps because they can’t afford new ones or can’t get new ones.
The answer is simple:
Sell the gas by the half gallon. This is perfectly legal as long as you post it on the pump.