Average gas price $6.20/gal by end of Summer

[Car-Guy]

As long as they don't have a closed door meeting between the four of them at the local Holiday Inn and agree on price over drinks, they are golden!

Once in a while I'll see one of the stations change the price on their sign (up or down) before the others do... You can bet the others will follow suit within ~15 minutes since they can all see each others signs. No meetings required (maybe), so I guess that's called competition and not collusion. That's the way things work I guess.

 

[Gumby]

^^^^
We only have four gas stations in town and they always have the same prices. Seems like price collusion (fixing) to me but they get away with it...I guess those laws don't apply at the local levels.

Charging the same price as your competitors does not violate the antitrust laws. Agreeing with them to charge the same price does. (The last thing I did before I retired was enforce the antitrust laws).

 

[Car-Guy]

Charging the same price as your competitors does not violate the antitrust laws. Agreeing with them to charge the same price does. (The last thing I did before I retired was enforce the antitrust laws).

I understand there's a difference. I sat through the "annual required attendance" antitrust meetings at my company, given by our in house lawyers, for a lot of years. To the layman (me) it sure seemed like a fine line many times especially in the areas of free enterprise and competition. Collusion was easy to understand, but market dominance/competition, not so much.

 

[Out of Steam]

$3.619/gal is the going rate here, down $0.98/gal from our peak.

About the same here in Central Virginia, though we were briefly above $5 at the peak.

 

[Out of Steam]

Once in a while I'll see one of the stations change the price on their sign (up or down) before the others do... You can bet the others will follow suit within ~15 minutes since they can all see each others signs.

Exxon must have some very loyal credit card holders, because their stations often seem able to price fuel well above competitors. Of course, they could be selling to those cardholders at a more competitive price.

 

[Car-Guy]

One of the four stations in the nearby town is an Exxon. It matches the prices with the others (all majors) "all" the time. No more, no less.

 

[Koolau]

As long as they don't have a closed door meeting between the four of them at the local Holiday Inn and agree on price over drinks, they are golden!

One of the great things about having a Costco (or, to a lesser extent, Sams) in town is that you can always beat the price of the majors and the independents. I suppose the volume is key. Our Costco must have 30 pumps and they're always busy. Savings are typically 30 cents or better. I've seen almost $1 savings though that's rare and transient. YMMV

 

[Car-Guy]

One of the great things about having a Costco (or, to a lesser extent, Sams) in town is that you can always beat the price of the majors and the independents. I suppose the volume is key. Our Costco must have 30 pumps and they're always busy. Savings are typically 30 cents or better. I've seen almost $1 savings though that's rare and transient. YMMV

30 pumps.... Ha.... There is a gas station (Buc-ees) here in Texas (New Braunfels area) that has 120 pumps on site. Heck we have one of their stations about ~30 miles away that has about 80 or 90 pumps (never counted them), and I've seen them all busy many times... Cheapest gas, NO. Best gas, NO. But they have a huge convenience store with all sorts of stuff on the main highway between Houston and Dallas and the "super clean restrooms" can handle hundreds of people at a time. The folks around here have a nickname for this "place" but it's not appropriate to "name" on this forum.

 

[Gumby]

One of the great things about having a Costco (or, to a lesser extent, Sams) in town is that you can always beat the price of the majors and the independents. I suppose the volume is key. Our Costco must have 30 pumps and they're always busy. Savings are typically 30 cents or better. I've seen almost $1 savings though that's rare and transient. YMMV

If I understand the pricing properly, it's $120 per year for a Costco membership. So, if the discount is $0.30 per gallon, I would need to buy 400 gallons of gas per year to break even. We don't use nearly that much gas. And I've seen the gas lines at our local Costco; I've got much better things to do with my time.

 

[Out of Steam]

30 pumps.... Ha.... There is a gas station (Buc-ees) here in Texas (New Braunfels area) that has 120 pumps on site. Heck we have one of their stations about ~30 miles away that has about 80 or 90 pumps (never counted them), and I've seen them all busy many times...

Everything's bigger in Texas. Don't think I've ever seen a station with more than 40.

 

[braumeister]

If I understand the pricing properly, it's $120 per year for a Costco membership. So, if the discount is $0.30 per gallon, I would need to buy 400 gallons of gas per year to break even. We don't use nearly that much gas. And I've seen the gas lines at our local Costco; I've got much better things to do with my time.

True.
I got sucked into upgrading to the $120 "executive" membership last year, and thanks to buying a set of tires there I was able to actually make $5 on the deal at the end of the year.

This year I looked at my account and realized there was no way I would spend enough to justify the extra $60 so I decided to downgrade back to regular membership.

As I expected, it was a big hassle and took probably 15 minutes in the store (you can't downgrade online). I often marvel at all the folks here who spend so much there that it's worthwhile, but certainly not for me. Maybe the fact that the nearest one is a 30 minute drive away is a factor.

 

[Car-Guy]

Everything's bigger in Texas. Don't think I've ever seen a station with more than 40.

It's one thing to have a lot of gas pumps but it's another to see them all busy... Passing by there on the highway, it usually looks like someone kicked a giant ant hill with all the people and cars running around on the property.

 

[Quattro73]

30 pumps.... Ha.... There is a gas station (Buc-ees) here in Texas (New Braunfels area) that has 120 pumps on site. Heck we have one of their stations about ~30 miles away that has about 80 or 90 pumps (never counted them), and I've seen them all busy many times... Cheapest gas, NO. Best gas, NO. But they have a huge convenience store with all sorts of stuff on the main highway between Houston and Dallas and the "super clean restrooms" can handle hundreds of people at a time. The folks around here have a nickname for this "place" but it's not appropriate to "name" on this forum.

Was on a trip 3 weeks ago and went into the dang Bucees to see what the hype was all about.

Wound up getting the Covid.

 

[Car-Guy]

Was on a trip 3 weeks ago and went into the dang Bucees to see what the hype was all about.

Wound up getting the Covid.

Don't doubt it.... Even though it's huge, there's a lot of folks (often shoulder to shoulder) from all over the place inside their stores.

 

[oldphd]

This info is about 1 1/2 weeks old, but lowest price I've seen in quite some time.

There was a corner with several gas stations at a major interstate exchange about 20 miles away from us, just happened to be there taking a car for service in the area. I'm not there much, but they do tend to have good prices.

Regular was $2.95... Costco and Sam's near me were running $3.74.

Bad news was that the car I was driving that needed gas uses premium... which normally runs about $0.40-0.50 more... at the gas war stations it was just short of $1 more... so not as good a deal as regular but still a slight savings....

 

[Popeye]

What will happen in October if / when we stop pulling from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? We can’t tap that forever. I think I saw a graph showing it will be down to about 1/2 it’s peak holdings by October.

 

[Chuckanut]

If I understand the pricing properly, it's $120 per year for a Costco membership. So, if the discount is $0.30 per gallon, I would need to buy 400 gallons of gas per year to break even. We don't use nearly that much gas. And I've seen the gas lines at our local Costco; I've got much better things to do with my time.

Presumably, if one pays the Costco membership fee, one gets other lower cost products that help absorb that fee. The basic membership is $60 and that's all you need to get into the store or use the gas pumps.

 

[REWahoo]

What will happen in October if / when we stop pulling from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? We can’t tap that forever. I think I saw a graph showing it will be down to about 1/2 it’s peak holdings by October.

According to a Department of Treasury estimate, stopping the withdrawal will impact gas prices between $0.17 and $0.42 per gallon.

The Price Impact of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release

 

[Koolau]

30 pumps.... Ha.... There is a gas station (Buc-ees) here in Texas (New Braunfels area) that has 120 pumps on site. Heck we have one of their stations about ~30 miles away that has about 80 or 90 pumps (never counted them), and I've seen them all busy many times... Cheapest gas, NO. Best gas, NO. But they have a huge convenience store with all sorts of stuff on the main highway between Houston and Dallas and the "super clean restrooms" can handle hundreds of people at a time. The folks around here have a nickname for this "place" but it's not appropriate to "name" on this forum.

I take it this mega-station serves more than half the population of Oahu (we have two Costco gas stations though I've never been to the other one.) So, in theory, Oahu has 1.2 million people (so 600k people per station.) Trust me, just finding land for 30 pumps on Oahu is quite a feat! YMMV

 

[audreyh1]

30 pumps.... Ha.... There is a gas station (Buc-ees) here in Texas (New Braunfels area) that has 120 pumps on site. Heck we have one of their stations about ~30 miles away that has about 80 or 90 pumps (never counted them), and I've seen them all busy many times... Cheapest gas, NO. Best gas, NO. But they have a huge convenience store with all sorts of stuff on the main highway between Houston and Dallas and the "super clean restrooms" can handle hundreds of people at a time. The folks around here have a nickname for this "place" but it's not appropriate to "name" on this forum.

It's one thing to have a lot of gas pumps but it's another to see them all busy... Passing by there on the highway, it usually looks like someone kicked a giant ant hill with all the people and cars running around on the property.

Buc-ee’s is expanding outside of TX like crazy! And ant hill is a good description. We visited a couple of them in GA recently checking out their Tesla supercharger installations in progress.

 

[Koolau]

When we speak of huge gas stations, it occurs to me that many TX cities are BIGGER than the entire Island of Oahu. We're 596 square miles with maybe half of that not being a mountain. Now that I think of it, 80 pump gas stations seems small for Texas.

 

[bobandsherry]

If I understand the pricing properly, it's $120 per year for a Costco membership. So, if the discount is $0.30 per gallon, I would need to buy 400 gallons of gas per year to break even. We don't use nearly that much gas. And I've seen the gas lines at our local Costco; I've got much better things to do with my time.

Basic "membership" is only $60. And if you don't feel you got your value out of the "membership" then at the end of the year you can stop in at a store and request a refund. So it's no lose.

I would never view it as just for fuel purchase. Besides fuel obviously you can shop in Costco and online. I needed a new washer and dryer, saved $200+ on the same pair vs Lowes, HD, etc, especially with the free delivery and haul away. I also save some decent $$$ on car rentals through Costco Travel. I also currently have my auto insurance through their partnership with American Family, so even more savings.

For me, I rarely use Costco for fill-ups, none really close enough, and the difference isn't really that significant. But I do save on fuel purchases occasionally as well. An ADDED benefit to the $60/yr "membership" cost.

 

[REWahoo]

The basic Costco membership is $60/yr. The Executive Membership is an additional $60, and that membership includes a 2% "reward" on all qualified purchases. We don't buy gas at Costco as the lines are too long. However, our annual purchases over the past few years have resulted in an annual reward of $80 to $100 per year, which lowered the cost of our membership to between $20 and $40. We consider that a real bargain when you consider Costco's quality, extended guarantees and return policy.

EDIT: I failed to mention you can occasionally find a real bargain there - like the water heater I purchased for $100, including free delivery!

 

[Koolau]

It's true that Costco fuel lines can be lengthy. But entering from the street to the shortest line, I'm fueling within 10 minutes. Not a long time to wait for 30 to 90 cents/gallon. YMMV

 

[RetiriusMinimus]

I purchased a new hybrid Honda Accord back in late 2019 as I was facing a horrendous 150 mile round trip commute, 4-5 hours commute a day… I did it for 2 months, averaging 58mpg.. I was happy… then Covid hit and I got remote status and have had it ever since. Thank God. I only have 15K on the car and I bet I could sell it for close to what I paid…