Last Thursday my car was finally empty enough that it made sense to charge my credit card in order to fill it up with gas. By this time gasoline had been under two dollars a gallon for several days, even more than a week.
With the steady fall of gas prices I didn't think there would be a sudden jump in them. There was a story once on local television some time ago about how Minneapolis/St. Paul is unique from other cities in that its gas prices spike without warning with regularity, a byproduct of how SuperAmerica, the dominant gas station chain in the area, controls gas prices here in order to maintain its windfall of profits and to push competitors out of the market. But I thought that would happen given the now months-long cratering of the price of oil.
Sure enough, however, that the gas stations on my way back home suddenly were showing prices over two bucks, in fact well over. Now, I am a member of SuperAmerica's frequent ... uh, gassers club, and I enjoy the fact that they honor any gas coupon I bring in, and I really like the fact you get double discounts on those coupons on Tuesdays (I could have gassed up on Tuesday, but I had so much gas then, and I didn't feel like putting another charge on my credit card, no matter how relatively small compared to the amounts I usually pay for fill-ups, before I had to). But damned if SA didn't decide that they were going to buck the worldwide freefall of oil prices and jack up prices, at least for a day or two (which is sometimes how long these price spikes last), in order to get some money, forcing all the other station chains to boost theirs. Hate going with the big chain because they often resort to these bullying tactics, but sometimes, unfortunately, there's safety, and discounts, in numbers.
I, and all Americans, are saving boatloads of money on gas prices. But I really wanted to be able to fill up my car with gas priced at below two bucks a gallon, so when I saw this price spike I kind of went into panic mode, hoping I'd be able to find one gas station, just one, that either hasn't bowed to peer pressure or was too lazy to change their prices yet. I think, though I don't really know, that the last time I paid below $2/gal. for gas was at least a decade ago, and probably longer than that. (Aside: I have kept receipts going back years every time I've filled up my tank. One day I want to organize all those receipts in chronological order so I can see how the price of gas has risen and fallen over time. That one day has been, oh, about a decade in coming, but I will organize it someday! OK, I probably won't.) But if it can suddenly spike, do I really, really know if it's coming back down after a day or two, or had the price bottomed out? Turns out that prices fell back below two bucks, but at the time, I didn't know. And I felt kind of rushed, kind of mad, and kind of scared that I blew my chance to cash in on less than two dollars a gallon.
But I managed to find a place below two bucks a gallon, and I didn't have to go out of my way to find it. On the way home I stopped by a Holiday station; Holiday probably is the closest competitor to SuperAmerica in the Twin Cities. (We're kind of oddball in one sense: Our biggest chains in some industries are regional, nowhere to be seen nationally nor in the big cities of New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. For an example, until Wal-Mart and Target overtook them in the past five to ten years, the biggest grocery store chain in the area was Cub Foods. And well before their massive downfall, Rainbow Foods was second in MSP. Do you know of any place called Cub or Rainbow outside of the Midwest, or even outside of Minnesota? I don't think so. We like our chains proprietary, small and ours.) Although I couldn't get any member points from Holiday, this particular station was still selling gas at $1.90 (the prevailing price that morning and about the week before the sudden spike during the day on Thursday), which was much cheaper than the, what, $2.06 I saw at most other stations. So I was able to fill my tank for just over $30, well below the $50 and even sometimes $60 when gas was over three bucks (and the day I filled it when it was, eesh, $4.10).
I remember that one time in the previous decade I got gas, including a coupon, for $1.48 a gallon. And I also remember that around 1999, 2000 it was around a buck a gallon. Shortly after that it slowly crept up to $1.25, and I pitched a fit when I saw that: "Why is gas getting so expensive?!" Then, I would have lost my temper when I saw $1.48. But seeing for $1.90 per, let alone $1.48 per, now? I could wipe myself with twenties, that's how much I feel like I'm rolling in the dough.
Don't know how long these good times will last, especially since the king of Saudi Arabia just died. So I should enjoy pumping gas with these days of low gas prices now while I can. We all should.
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