I always hear this, but on the face of it it belies credulity. There is a huge cost in permitting and then maintaining large underground tanks. Beer and bags of normie feed aren’t gonna keep up with that. It’s more reasonable to assume they at the least break even which would indicate that they make at least 10% gross on the product.
I’ve noted this is a common trope among horse boarding facilities (“we never make any money on this op”). Now, this could be true across a lot of stuff if it’s part of an overall tax reduction strategy, but no one is going in a million plus (or in to debt) on a gas station or hay burner facility to earn sub inflation returns without a strategy behind it…
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This was back in the early-mid 80s, but I moonlighted at a local gas station a couple of nights a week, and on Saturdays. At the time, we were a branded, but privately owned Shell Franchise service station, with 3 service bays. We typically made 2-3 cents a gallon for gas sold, and if we sold more than 50,000 gallons a month (which we did when I was there), shell would kick in an extra 2 cents per gallon.
In the meantime, the Gastown station across the street was usually retailing a couple of cents lower than us, and at times, were selling retail for less than what we were paying Shell wholesale. The owner of our station kept his books in the back office, and I looked at them numerous times.
So yeah, for the gas station, it was a very low margin operation at the time, and I bet it’s even lower now. They make money selling beer and snacks from the convenience store. The gas sales - while not quite a loss leader, has a very thin margin and serves to draw people in to the store to buy other goods.
Biden is full of malarkey if he thinks that the gas station is marking up gas well over their costs. It’s all about supply and demand, as always. And Biden’s administration have done much to weaken the supply, which obviously raises prices. No magic there.
At $5 a gallon stations are make far less than 10%!
Prior to the Biden increases they typically made 15 cents a gallon, now slightly more to recover increased costs of credit card fees.
Okay.
I was simply quoting you a number I got from a friend, who happens to be among a group of long-time residents and business owners who still conduct most of their affairs based on their word and occasionally (if they want to get formal) with a handshake.
I'm not going to insult him by asking about your assumptions.
End of discussion on that subject if it's all the same to you.