Crazy Gas Prices are Still Here

ANYTIME

ANYTIME

New Member
Dec 3, 2006
345
Northern Virginia
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Yesterday, I filled the car with Regular (87 Octane) gas at $1.85 a gallon.

Two days earlier, I called several marinas within 15 miles of each other, asking what their prices were. Here are the results (No marina names to avoid unnecessary embarrassment to them)
1. - $3.50 a gallon
2. - $3.05 a gallon
3. - $4.91 a gallon
4. - $2.79 a gallon

Guess where I am going to get my winter layup gas this season.
 
My marina doesn't flex with the land based pump prices either. Their price is marked up from the last time the tanker made a drop. I paid $4.00 for my winter fill at the marina, it was $2.30 ish in early Oct. on land...take advantage of it and hey, burn a gallon for me!
 
The problem that many of these Marinas have is they paid high prices for their current supply of gasoline a few months back and they haven't received any new deliveries yet at lower prices. So they have to charge more just to break even.

I found the same situation on our lake. The cheapest I could find a few weeks ago was $3.12 a gallon.
 
I called local marinas in Middle river the other day, prices ranged from 3.99 to 3 even. I wonder if they all work the same way as my marina. They will charge the same price for the gas until the load is gone. The price will change on the next fill up. They are not like the gas stations on the street that change their price daily. Sometime it works to our advantage, sometime it goes the other way. I paid 3.59 this morning. :smt013
 
But do they hold the price down until the next delivery when prices are going up? I doubt it.
 
I'm lucky to keep my boat 20 minutes from one of the cheapest marinas on the east coast. Last weekend I filled up at 2.34 a gallon for mid grade. Diesel was 2.38. My home marina though was 3.96. Why they don't realize they can cut their profits on the current tank and make up for it on the added sales from cheaper fuel on the next load is beyond me :huh: No one, and I mean nobody at all buys gas in my marina. It will still be there next spring at 3.96 probably. SB
 
Vince_nj1 said:
But do they hold the price down until the next delivery when prices are going up? I doubt it.
Click to expand...

Yes they do, in fact there was a time last season where I was paying less for the gas for the boat then what I was paying for gas on the street. The price stays until the next load.

They have already paid for the fuel, so if they bought at a price just before the crazy surge, you luck out until the next load. It goes the other way as well. So in this case the case, the price stays at 3.59 a gallon until they get there next shipment.


That is why if you are still in the water and need to fill up you should shop around, you may see some big difference. It may pay to go a little distance if you can save 50 cents to a dollar a gallon on fuel.
 
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That's the good part about it, if you have choices. Our marina doesn't sell much gas, so when it's going up fast, I keep buying low at our marina. Then, when prices go down, I take advantage of other marinas that keep the gas flowing and keep the prices falling.
 
Hampton said:
That's the good part about it, if you have choices. Our marina doesn't sell much gas, so when it's going up fast, I keep buying low at our marina. Then, when prices go down, I take advantage of other marinas that keep the gas flowing and keep the prices falling.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the way to work it:thumbsup:
 
That has to be the worst business practice in the world when selling a commodity like fuel...

I remember the media, as well as people on this board, screaming bloody murder when gas prices started shooting up and all these people were saying "HEY!! It's still the old gas they bought last week at a cheaper price they have in their tanks so they are price gouging!!!" Remember those threads here?

So.. I would expect anyone that holds ANY inventory of ANYTHING to set the price they sell it TODAY based on what it would cost to replace TODAY even if they don't replace it TODAY. If you went and bought 10 pounds of gold at a wholesale cost, say $10, and inventoried it and then marked it up 10% because you cast it in stupid coins or something, would anyone expect when gold went to $50 that you would still sell your inventory at your cost +10%? Come on! Replace the word "gold" with "wheat", "gas", "pork bellies", "orange juice", or "rat poop". That's why gas stations raise their prices the day wholesale costs go up even though they are on the old tank. It's no one's business what they paid for it a month ago.. if the value of their inventory went up, so be it. Likewise, if the value of the inventory goes down, they have to follow it down to be competitive. But if they made excess up, it should cover the lose going down assuming they were only buying the quantities being sold in a short time frame. That's not how the media reports it though... We should tax it more on the way up and not let them write it off on the way down... Obamaism.

If the marina loaded up with a billion gallans of fuel thinking they were buying "cheap" at $3 a gallon wholesale when they sell 500 gallons a week, they made a bad business decision. Sounds like "greed" to me.

It's easy to track wholesale gas and diesel prices on a daily basis. It's on CNBC every morning and printed in the Wall Street Journal.

I was on the boat today and Bluewater has gas at $2.59 and diesel at $2.69. Seems a little high... I bet I can go over to Tidewater Marina and do better...
 
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Bad business for them or not that is the way the marina I go to works and it sounds like many others as well. Sometimes it worked to my advantage, say when the price on the street was going up and up but the marinas price stayed the same.

Now as the price is dropping as quickly as they went up it is working against me. In fact one of the employees told me today as a heads up a new load is coming in next week, and there will be a very big drop in the price per gallon. Unfortunately for me I saw him after I filled up.

The only good thing is if the prices freak out again over the winter, the gas next spring will be at the current rate.

Hey it’s their business…. This why I will make some phone calls to local marinas before I fill up. In semi-normal times the prices of fuel does not swing as much as it has lately. I mean just a few months ago we were paying over 4 dollars a gallon for gas, now it is down to two and still dropping.
 
wonder what the quality of that high priced will be once they finally sell it?
How does fuel stations keep slow moving inventory from souring?
 
Weave said:
wonder what the quality of that high priced will be once they finally sell it?
How does fuel stations keep slow moving inventory from souring?
Click to expand...

Exactly. My mechanic told me that fuel will only stay fresh for about 30 days before it starts to breakdown. also, there are different blends for winter and summertime use. This is why he told me to keep my tanks low during the winter for moderate use. He told me that winter blend fuels (when run in summer/hotter temps) can have a tendency to "boil" in the fuel system which can cause an engine not to start again after it has heated up.

He says he learned all of this from a GM engineer at a fuel seminar. Makes sense if they do different blends depending on outside temps. I always thought Gas was Gas, but perhaps not.

The pump price at my Marina was 4.55 yesterday. I think it may sit there awhile!
 
Four Suns said:
That has to be the worst business practice in the world when selling a commodity like fuel...

I remember the media, as well as people on this board, screaming bloody murder when gas prices started shooting up and all these people were saying "HEY!! It's still the old gas they bought last week at a cheaper price they have in their tanks so they are price gouging!!!" Remember those threads here?

So.. I would expect anyone that holds ANY inventory of ANYTHING to set the price they sell it TODAY based on what it would cost to replace TODAY even if they don't replace it TODAY. If you went and bought 10 pounds of gold at a wholesale cost, say $10, and inventoried it and then marked it up 10% because you cast it in stupid coins or something, would anyone expect when gold went to $50 that you would still sell your inventory at your cost +10%? Come on! Replace the word "gold" with "wheat", "gas", "pork bellies", "orange juice", or "rat poop". That's why gas stations raise their prices the day wholesale costs go up even though they are on the old tank. It's no one's business what they paid for it a month ago.. if the value of their inventory went up, so be it. Likewise, if the value of the inventory goes down, they have to follow it down to be competitive. But if they made excess up, it should cover the lose going down assuming they were only buying the quantities being sold in a short time frame. That's not how the media reports it though... We should tax it more on the way up and not let them write it off on the way down... Obamaism.

If the marina loaded up with a billion gallans of fuel thinking they were buying "cheap" at $3 a gallon wholesale when they sell 500 gallons a week, they made a bad business decision. Sounds like "greed" to me.

It's easy to track wholesale gas and diesel prices on a daily basis. It's on CNBC every morning and printed in the Wall Street Journal.

I was on the boat today and Bluewater has gas at $2.59 and diesel at $2.69. Seems a little high... I bet I can go over to Tidewater Marina and do better...
Click to expand...

We filled up at Bluewater 2 Saturdays ago. It was $2.59 then. Sunset, 5 mins away for those not familiar with the area, was $3.60 something.

2 weeks before we left the Richmond area to go to Deltaville, our marina was at 3.70. He does not move a lot of fuel. I knew he purchased the fuel when prices were high and he was going to have a tough time moving it now.

I called him every 3-4 days asking what his price was. It came down 20 cents each time I called, even though he did not take on any fuel. I called on our way down when we left for Deltaville. He said 3.40, I said 3.20, got it for 3.19. I knew the fuel would be sitting for a while and he needed to move it.
 
ANYTIME said:
Yesterday, I filled the car with Regular (87 Octane) gas at $1.85 a gallon.

Two days earlier, I called several marinas within 15 miles of each other, asking what their prices were. Here are the results (No marina names to avoid unnecessary embarrassment to them)
1. - $3.50 a gallon
2. - $3.05 a gallon
3. - $4.91 a gallon
4. - $2.79 a gallon

Guess where I am going to get my winter layup gas this season.
Click to expand...

Yesterday, after working on the Axius system, we went to Marina #4 above, which is Belmont Bay Marina and filled the tanks for $2.49 a gallon. The price came down $0.30 in just a couple of days. The guy who works there told us that they sell a lot of gas.

On a side note, the winds were over 20mph and the water was pretty rough and other than a couple of bass boats, we were the only boat on the water. It wasn't raining, but if we didn't have the winshield isenglass up, we would have gotten soaked with all the water blowing over the bow.
 
In Boston, the gas dock price has been reliably at the same level as the highway premium price. It seemed to have changed weekly with the fluxuations, if any. We're at about $2.50 now. That is a commercial seller, so I imagine the small retailers are trying to sell what's left in their tanks for what they paid for it.
 
Crazy pricing right now......I put 93 oct in my truck the other day for 1.74/gl
 
The sad thing is that this was all easily predicted by looking at the run-up on the graph (remember "feet on the floor and all eyes on the door?") and many people including my mother locked in on their home heating oil at $4 a gallon when the analysts were predicting oil was going to $200 a barrel and gas at $15 a gallon. Many people were fooled out of their money by scare tactics. The last I checked oil was $56 a barrel. See what gas is selling at now? Go and check what gas was selling at the last time oil was $56 a barrel. We're still getting ripped off and made to believe the sky is about to fall. I'm looking forward to filling my tank next year for $200 instead of $550.
 
" I'm looking forward to filling my tank next year for $200 instead of $550."

Exactly, I can boat twice as much! Not counting on this though.
 
Well as I said in an earlier post on this topic I expected the price to make a big change on the next load. I just left the marina and the load came in today, the price is now $2.33 a gallon. A drop from $3.59 to $2.33, and I had just topped off with about 50 gallons. Had I know before I filled up, I would have had an extra 70 bucks now.:smt013 Good thing I did not need 100 gallons on more.


The good thing about it though if the gas prices soar again over the winter, the first couple of tanks fills next season will be at this price.
 
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