Posted on 10/18/2007 12:16:42 PM PDT by shooter223
Polk County, Florida More charges are expected after deputies caught a Winter Haven man siphoning more than 923 gallons of fuel from underground tanks at gas stations in Pasco and Polk counties.
70-year-old Hobert Gibson was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of grand theft.
Over the last ten months, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd suspects Gibson has stolen 3,000 to 10,000 gallons of fuel each week. But so far, only one gas station has come forward.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabays10.com ...
I believe the scheme fell apart when the tanker car sprung a leak and blew up, toasting the driver.
Regards,
GtG
It costs Saudi less that a dollar to pump a barrel of oil out of the sand. They are selling that oil for $85.
That's a steal at $2.05/gal.
Then there are a whole sh!t load of people who invest time, money, risk, effort and equipment in transporting that crude, processing it into a host of chemicals (including such things as plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, solvents, waxes, tar, asphalt and on and on). These people expect to get paid for all the work and value they add to the crude.
The tanker ship company and pipeline owners get about 4¢/gal
The refinery gets about 40¢/gal
It gets hauled to your local gas station by a trucker who also wants to get paid enough to cover the cost of his truck, the fuel he burns, the insurance, and licensing, with enough left over to feed and clothe his nagging wife and runny nosed kids.
The trucker gets about 35¢/mile. Call it 5000 gal per delivery, 50 miles round trip yields a cost at 0.4¢/gal
Your neighbor who owns the station has to pay the Big Oil company its franchise fee, pay rent/mortgage on the station, taxes, insurance, cover the occasional drive off, set aside enough to remediate any damage a leaking tank might cause and live on whatever is left over.
For taking on all these risks and expenses, and the occasional armed robbery he gets to pocket 3¢/gal.
So where is the second real steal?
Who assumes none of the risk, invests in none of the equipment, pays none of the salaries, and not only contributes nothing to the process of getting that gas into your car, but actively tries to make that process as difficult and expensive as possible??
That would be the government.
State Underground Storage Tank Fee 1¢/gal
State and Local Sales Tax 23¢/gal
State Excise Tax 18¢/gal
Federal Excise Tax 18¢/gal
For a total government burden of 60¢/gal
And the democrats want to add a 50¢/gal carbon tax to that!
I gather that technician wasn’t you, else your screen name would be Gandalf_The_Brown
It's a start...
Hardly a drop in the bucket! There are 159 counties in GA, and they are just chock full of little municipalities, probably around 500 or so, each with its own full-dress gummint . . . . I'm not sure anybody noticed when the Tallapoosa city fathers donned horizontal pinstripes . . . .
Yechh.
I once dug a vault privy, but it hadn't been USED yet.
True story: when my dad was a student, they used to have houseparties at somebody's lake cabin, which of course had the one-holer privy "down the path", no running water for miles. My dad rigged a transmitter and speaker under the seat of the privy, and when a pretty coed went in he would wait about a minute, then transmit, "Hey, could you move out of the light? I'm trying to WORK down here!"
He said some of the girls laughed it off, but some were highly indignant and demanded their dates take them home instanter.
He met mom at a house party, so I guess she was a good sport!
It only seems fair. The oil companies steal millions of dollars from us every day. In broad daylight.
How else could you steal 10000 gallons?
***10 Gallons at a time, a thousand times. “umm, I’ll pay you for that next Tuesday”. You’d think the owner would catch on.
My Mom didn't raise ANY dumb children. I'm the guy who suggested the lock!
Regards,
GtG
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.