Compare this image:
Regular at 2.59. Highway 93, Colorado, 2016
With this one:
Regular at 1.79. Boulder, Colorado, 2016
Yeah, I know…beautiful bike, eh?
No, no, no…not the bike.
I refer to the price for a gallon of regular gas–$2.59.9 versus $1.79.9. That’s an 80 cent difference, in case you flunked your university Diffy-Q class.
So, you might think that these two images were simply taken, say, two years apart, right?
But, they weren’t.
No, I snapped both of these pictures with my handy iPhone just today whilst oot and aboot (as our Canadians friends say) on a mountain bike ride into the foothills. The two stations are less than two miles apart on the same main drag (Hwy 93/Broadway). The Shell station you’ll find on the south edge of town–which might explain the high price as it is indeed the last chance petrol possibility for many travelers. The King Soopers station is just to the north–in a much busier part of Boulder proper.
Normally, you might see a five cent, ten cent, or perhaps even a twenty cent difference in gas prices between stations within a given local area. But eighty cents? Holy wow!
From what I understand, gas at a convenience store typically isn’t a big money maker. The margin just isn’t that great–the average is around 18 cents on the gallon. Instead, they make their bigger bucks on what you buy inside the convenience store–bottled water, beer, sodas, beer, chips, beer, hot dogs, beer, Twizzlers, Twinkies, beef jerky, chewing gum, beer, cigarettes, beer, and all that other nutritious stuff.
In the case of the first example above, they apparently sell some 2,000 to 2,500 gallons a day (unofficial estimate from an employee I was chatting with). Given the additional markup, that’s a hefty daily take–even if you don’t walk inside to buy that Twinkie (expiration date June 2019) that was screaming your name. Or the beer.
Anyone have a similar example from other areas around Colorado or the US of A?
Leave a reply