The price wars go on inside the stores where they make all their profit. Very little is made off gas sales at the retail level.

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Around here prices vary with part of town, highway access, etc.

It is not uncommon around me to see diesel prices range 70 cents a gallon. It's crazy.

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

And they checked your oil and tire pressure before washing the windshield.

Green stamps. We used to get S&H green stamps.

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Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep that is correct. Some even had uniforms like the men of Texaco!

You can trust your car
To the man who wears the star
The big, bright Texaco star

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Originally posted by PowerSurge:
The price wars go on inside the stores where they make all their profit. Very little is made off gas sales at the retail level.

^^ THIS ^^

They make a penny or two a gallon off gas which they hope is enough at the end of the month to pay the electric bill. They make their real money off Coke, Twinkies, Marlboro's, etc. For example, they'll buy a case of water for less than $4, and sell it as individual bottles where they turn it into $24 to $48.

Walmart, Kroger, Costco, etc. all sell gasoline to get you in their parking lot where they hope you'll go inside for the real wallet shakedown.

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Originally posted by roarindan:
I haven't seen a truck with the same logo's dropping fuel at either store.

As part of going to the franchise model, the majors and supermajors all sold their fleet of tanker trucks. Originally, they made the franchisee or jobber paint the truck with the logo, but that caused 2 problems:

It's expensive. I haven't heard a value in 20 years, but it was $13k back then.

Liability and reputation damage of somebody else driving something with your logo on it. In the late 90s, a buddy of mine had to provide emergency response for a tanker truck leak because somebody tried to commit suicide in their SUV by driving off an overpass in Dallas. Their SUV landed on a tanker truck with my employer's logo on it, and since our logo was was all over the news we sent emergency response to clean it up.

The gasoline leaves the refinery without additives, and the distribution terminals where tanker trucks get their fuel have everybody's additive as well as a huge tank of generic additive. It's pretty common to see additive tanks for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, Phillips, etc. next to the loading rack. The tanker truck driver keys in what they need in each tank (some have 5 tanks on the same tanker) on the truck so they could load 3 tanks for the busy Shell by the interstate and then the 4th and 5th tank for the less busy neighborhood Phillips. Having a no name tanker truck makes the load splitting palatable (i.e. consumers would post all over social media if a Chevron tanker was dropping off gasoline at an Exxon).

As you can see, it's much better to just let the franchisee get gasoline delivered in a truck with no logo or somebody else's logo on it.

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.