Gas Price-Zone Price

Gas stations & convenience stores (AM/PM, 7-Eleven, etc.)
storewanderer
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: August 21st, 2022, 1:45 pm I only get gas at Costco if I am passing by late at night. There are some local stations that are very close in price. There is a very busy Costco gas in Concord, California but the lines are insane even at closing time. They have to turn cars away before the gas station even closes. I estimate wait times for gas could be 35 minutes. Just waiting in line wastes too much gas.
At Sam's Club, at closing time, the gas pump just up and shuts off. I recall being there once fueling and in the middle of fueling, the pump shut off on its own and a message flashed on the screen "This Site is Closed." It didn't even give me the option for a receipt.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by Alpha8472 »

Costco is not being competitive in the San Francisco Bay Area. Costco is at $5.25 and Valero is $4.99, Arco is $5.09 in Concord, California.

The people waiting 30 minutes for Costco gas are really wasting their time and money. Many other cities have similar prices. Independent stations are lower than Costco. Even Safeway is about 5 cents lower.

People need to shop around as Costco is not the lowest price.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by Super S »

A lot of stations in my area took a huge 40 cent a gallon jump in price yesterday. Prices are well above $5.00 a gallon again now at most stations.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by babs »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 25th, 2022, 12:43 am Costco is not being competitive in the San Francisco Bay Area. Costco is at $5.25 and Valero is $4.99, Arco is $5.09 in Concord, California.

The people waiting 30 minutes for Costco gas are really wasting their time and money. Many other cities have similar prices. Independent stations are lower than Costco. Even Safeway is about 5 cents lower.

People need to shop around as Costco is not the lowest price.
Because Costco gets 2 or more deliveries a day, their gas prices can spike suddenly if gas prices rise as they don't have gas in their tank for weeks like some low volume gas station. Costco is the best gauge of current market prices. As Super S says above, there was some odd spike in gas prices in the past 2 days.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: September 25th, 2022, 6:46 am A lot of stations in my area took a huge 40 cent a gallon jump in price yesterday. Prices are well above $5.00 a gallon again now at most stations.
This happened around Reno around 9/10. It has been swinging back and forth .20 since then.

Maverik continues to be the first in line to be the high price leader when it is time for a price hike, then often "pulls back" after watching what competitors do. This weekend the supply must be particularly troublesome as Maverik did not do its usual pull back but just kept the high price. Friday in Carson City Maverik moved both of its stations from 4.89 to 5.25 and also went up to 5.25 in Minden. The competitors within immediate distance of their stations in Carson City also moved to 5.25 (two Golden Gates and one Arco) but nobody else did and at this point the others in Carson City including various Chevron, Shell, 7-11 are around 4.99.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by Alpha8472 »

In one week some gas stations in Northern California have jumped up $1.

Costco is at around $5.89. It was around $4.79 about 2 weeks ago. There are probably around 7 local gas stations lower than Costco including a Valero at $4.99. I am still surprised by the wide range.

I did notice shorter lines at the Costco gas station today. People are shopping around more.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by storewanderer »

There is a dealer Chevron in Reno on Lakeside, which is often pretty high priced. Yesterday night it was at 6.89! There is a similarly high priced dealer Shell in Reno at Kietzke and Moana and yesterday night it was 6.38. These represent record high prices for those two stations. Other than those most are still under 6. Oddly 7 Eleven has some at 5.19 or did earlier today.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by ClownLoach »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 30th, 2022, 5:33 pm In one week some gas stations in Northern California have jumped up $1.

Costco is at around $5.89. It was around $4.79 about 2 weeks ago. There are probably around 7 local gas stations lower than Costco including a Valero at $4.99. I am still surprised by the wide range.

I did notice shorter lines at the Costco gas station today. People are shopping around more.
In SoCal it seems Chevron is by far the most expensive brand across the board.

What is interesting is that Chevron supplies Costco in SoCal (although it may not be the exact Chevron product as they add proprietary additives at their branded stations - I doubt they would include the same additives at the Costco stations they supply).

Makes me wonder if they literally raise their own brand prices to offset selling to Costco at a low wholesale price.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by ClownLoach »

ClownLoach wrote: October 1st, 2022, 9:03 am
Alpha8472 wrote: September 30th, 2022, 5:33 pm In one week some gas stations in Northern California have jumped up $1.

Costco is at around $5.89. It was around $4.79 about 2 weeks ago. There are probably around 7 local gas stations lower than Costco including a Valero at $4.99. I am still surprised by the wide range.

I did notice shorter lines at the Costco gas station today. People are shopping around more.
In SoCal it seems Chevron is by far the most expensive brand across the board.

What is interesting is that Chevron supplies Costco in SoCal (although it may not be the exact Chevron product as they add proprietary additives at their branded stations - I doubt they would include the same additives at the Costco stations they supply).

Makes me wonder if they literally raise their own brand prices to offset selling to Costco at a low wholesale price.
I should add how I found this out. I was asked while filling up at Costco by a supervisor to please wait so he could time the gas pump.

He explained as he was clocking the fill up that Costco is maniacal about the maintenance and performance of their gas pumps. They are required to be pumping at least 8 gallons per minute, and should be up to the California state maximum of 10. He said that corporate gets reports and if a pump is not performing to that speed then they expect a service tech was already called by the store to change the filters. (if the corporate office brought it to their attention first then heads will roll). With the volume they do and the constant line time is money, literally. He then explained that their gas comes from the Chevron refinery and that a formula change happened a few months ago which caused their filters to clog and performance to slow, so they were at one point having the filters changed every other day when normally they're changed every couple of weeks. He said nobody else in the industry changes their filters as often as Costco and they make up 90% of the service calls in California for their dispenser manufacturer to constantly change filters. Funny thing is I was filling a moving truck at the time so it was about 25 gallons. Needed to refill a couple of days later and went to an Arco that seemed clean and well maintained. It took nearly 15 minutes to dispense the same 25 gallons. So basically Costco isn't really "spot market" in California as much as a purchase contract, and they have the best maintained pumps. Clean filters are probably more important than anything else at gas stations - gas is surprisingly dirty stuff. That no name station that may be a few cents cheaper definitely isn't changing their filters every two weeks, if they change them at all.
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Re: Gas Price-Zone Price

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: October 1st, 2022, 9:03 am

In SoCal it seems Chevron is by far the most expensive brand across the board.

What is interesting is that Chevron supplies Costco in SoCal (although it may not be the exact Chevron product as they add proprietary additives at their branded stations - I doubt they would include the same additives at the Costco stations they supply).

Makes me wonder if they literally raise their own brand prices to offset selling to Costco at a low wholesale price.
Chevron is the strongest of the brands in CA with higher credit card penetration than Shell and 76 (I won't even mention the weak brands like Valero) and higher volume stations that command a higher price. If you are a dealer, you want to brand Chevron if you can in CA. Shell and 76 try to present as if they have as good of a gas and as good of programs as Chevron and all of that is debatable but at the end of the day if you want an effective station in CA with a high price and high use of the oil company's credit card at your site, and strong traffic, you brand Chevron. Unless you want to run a trash operation with zero standards, then you go brand Valero or be unbranded.

In Reno almost all of the gas comes from a Chevron refinery; the pipeline that feeds the gas terminal in Sparks is connected to the Chevron NorCal refinery. It doesn't matter what brand it is. So out here in Reno, there have always been a lot of Chevron stations. Terrible Herbst took a lot of awful unbranded stations around 2007 or 2008 and turned them into awful Chevron or Texaco stations, then they went belly up in this part of the state in the 2010 recession and left all but one location. Jackson Oil who previously had only Shell in the area picked up the remnants of Terrible Herbst up here and it was very interesting how a number of their Shell dealers switched to being Chevron dealers when given the chance. Most of the awful unbranded stations promptly debranded from Chevron when Terrible Herbst quit attempting to operate them as Jacksons did not assume operations of those lousy locations but found operators to run them, though later as operators went belly up (one tried to convert his station to a Mobil... yet he was leasing the thing from Jacksons and had to get his fuel from them and use Chevron gas...), Jackson did take a couple of those over and did very major remodels to them and operates them now.

Out in Winnemucca, NV the gas starts coming from somewhere else but some of that gas comes from Reno too (and Regular becomes 85 octane). There have been stations in Reno that from time to time sell the 85 Octane fuel from somewhere else as regular, but that arrangement typically hasn't worked long; a chain called Golden Gate did it for years, and a TA truck stop did it briefly when it went between a 76 and a Valero branding.
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