Ridiculous gas prices

[day5 0]

Steve what ever I say and beleave as true is based off of facts as I have preceved them. I am willing to be wrong. I expect to be wrong some of the time. But I do sit up late at night keeping my google running red hot looking for info on different things. I enjoy looking up stories and seeing them form different angles.

[Steeldrifter 0]

Matt I'm not tryin to prove you wrong or be a dick to you. I'm just expressing that some "facts' my not be totally as they seem is all. My biggest problem with the whole (owners of Gas stations) is what I pointed to earlier. There are many time's when they will raise the price as much as 15-20 cents overnight due to a suspected increase of what they are going to have to pay for the next supply of gas to refill their underground tanks. Now if the price they pay does in fact go up 15-20 cents and they restock the very day that they pass the increase along to us...then thats fine, I have NO problem with that because thats how things should work. What pisses me off though is the fact that there's many times they jump that price up 15-20cents and then they dont have a resupply of the tanks come in for 2-3 days. So they are making an extra 20 cents off the gas already paid a lower price for themselves, and then when the resupply does come in they make their "normal" 5-10cents per gal off of that. Then when the price of their cost drops 20 cents, look how long it takes for that 20 cent to show up in savings at the station. IMO that is just not fair to the consumer. That would be like someone ordering a rod from me this month and me charging them an extra $20 for the blank because the blank price will be going up in jan of 2008....Understand the comparision I'm tryin to make?

 

I know 15-20cents extra that may may make off that doesnt seem like alot, but if you look at it over an entire lifetime of filling up the average 24gal tank in your truck then that adds up to a whole lot of money that they are taking us for in the long run.

[day5 0]

Even more than that the guy who leases his station form a jobber (gas distrubitor affiliated with big oil) the leaser only make a presentage basesd off of sales so the gas is not his to buy or sell. That guy gets screwed over more than the "owners". This is a very complex issue with more to it than Id like to type out. Steve I know you are not being a dick to me on this if you were you would say "Im being a dick!" LOL And Im not trying to prove you wrong but I do have alot of information that is directly from the industry. No biggie to me!!

[Philly 0]

I'm sure I'm not the only one here, but I can remember when gas was $0.25 a gallon. My sister and her future husband use to stop by and borrow $2 or $3 to fill up their car's gas tank. I can remember the doom and gloom that followed the oil embargo when gas jumped to $0.75 cents a gallon and the speed limit dropped to 55 and turned my trip to college from 14 hours to 24 hours.

As someone already mentioned what we're paying now for gas the rest of the world was paying years ago.

To get back to the original question. Has it influenced how I fish and what I drive. Yes and Yes. I'm less likely to hop in my car and drive 3 or 4 hours for a day of fishing. I'm fortunate in that I've have decent warm water, salt water and cold water fishing within 60 to 100 miles of my house. I have a 14 mile round trip to work. I've driven SUV's for the last 25 years. My last was a Pathfinder that I put to rest in May after 10 years and 205, 000 miles. I'd consider going to a smaller SUV, but I wasn't willing to pay the price and the gas mileage wasn't that great. Plus I hadn't had the Pathfinder off road in years. So I settled on a small car, the Nissan Versa. So far, it's met my needs. I can get my fishing and camping gear in it, I'm just not going off road with it. The gas mileage so far hasn't been up to what's advertised, but it's barely has 5,000 miles on it. Still my Pathfinder at the end was getting 15 mpg city and 18 mpg highway and would be costing me between $40 and $50 a week to fill it up. The new one's getting 25 mpg city and almost 30 mpg highway. It costs me about $25 a week to gas it up.

Now, what's interesting is the difference in gas prices in the city. There are a couple of Sunoco stations that I use. The one down the street regular gas was $3.12 on Friday, another one I use was $3.19. Now 7 miles away by where I work. On Friday, gas at one Sunoco was $2.98 and at another $3.02. Each station has the same federal, state and city taxes but the price difference between the highest and lowest was $0.21 a gallon. I fill up when I need to. The cost difference between the highest and lowest per fill up is $1.89. I won't drive to New Jersey or Delaware where gas is cheaper like a lot a folks do. I'm going to use at least a gallon of gas to get to either state, plus to get to NJ, I have to pay $2 or $3 in bridge tolls. So to save a $1.89 on a fill up. It will cost me about $3.00 to go to Delaware and $5 or $6 to go to NJ, not to mention where and tear on my car and my nerves.

Now think of this nightmare, and it may come to be here. I make one or two trips a year to Japan. I work for the government, and you would need an international license to drive in Japan anyway. There are no free highways. All roads are toll roads. For those of you familiar with it. Think the Garden State Parkway in NJ. Toll booths every 10 miles or so. Instead of a $.50 cent toll, try an $8 to $10 toll and gas that's close to $6 a gallon. Has it cut down on the driving, you think rush hours are bad in the states. You know the video screens that are hot item these days in minivans. They were in cars 10 years ago in Japan, so people would have something to watch while they sat in traffic. And there are cars zipping along the roads at 70 mph when traffic's moving that make my Versa look like an SUV.

We've been spoiled for many, many years by cheap gas, those days are past. Anyone remember the carburator that was suppose to give even gas guzzlers 50 mpg, but it was suppressed by government at the behest of big oil?

[NZCicada 0]

Try NZ, over $7.00 a gallon.