[BW2221]

I am to the right of Attila the Hun on most issues, but am not a fan of big oil. There are only realty five major oil companies that control the market.

They may not be price gouging, but I think it's fair to say they are not highly competitive at the retail level.

Dodge wants you to buy their vehicles over Ford or Toyota. They have aggressive advertising, test drive promotions and incentives Tell me what ConocoPhillips is doing to win your business from ExxonMobil or Shell. Every major oil company is very pleased with the status quo. They may not be very competitive, but they are all making record profits.

[groanup]

Dodges and Toyotas are not commodities. A commodity is something that you can take off of any shelf in any store and its qualities and characteristics are the same. If you want, you can buy all the gasoline you want in the futures pits. I think it trades in 40,000 gallon quantities per contract. Get a few friends together, build a storage facility and buy it. The oil companies have to pay the market rate for their raw materials and must charge a market price for their final product. They keep their profit margins the same. They must maximize profits for their shareholders.

If the margin is 3% on a gallon of gas then if a gallon costs 1.00 their marginal profit is 3 cents. If a gallon costs 3.00 their marginal profit is 9 cents.

[Mr. Silverback]

They may not be price gouging, but I think it's fair to say they are not highly competitive at the retail level.

Explain to me how somebody gets a 3.3% profit margin from a no-competition situation.

Dodge wants you to buy their vehicles over Ford or Toyota. They have aggressive advertising, test drive promotions and incentives Tell me what ConocoPhillips is doing to win your business from ExxonMobil or Shell.

Since almost every gas station I go into seems to have a contest or a special credit card deal, it seems they are competing with incentives. But let's put that aside and have a lesson in fungible commodities: Tell me what aggressive advertising and incentives grain elevator A does to gain advantage over grain elevator B.