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A couple days ago, I drove past a local Stickup and saw E85 for sale. First time I can recall seeing E85 locally.
$4.29⁹ per gallon. This is CA, and a Stickup (Chevron) to boot. But it still felt high, even for them. I'm not feeling the alcohol savings.
Maybe it's a promotion - for every 20 gallons of expensive E85, you get a free Fifth of a whiskey of your choice. But I didn't see a promo sign, and didn't inquire within the mini-store.
Prices seem to have stabilized, but what I have been noticing lately is the price discrepancy between cash/credit, normally $.10-$.15 a gallon, has been closer to $.25 a gallon. in a related vein, the jump to go from 87 to 89 is over a dollar a gallon!
The price of regular gas around me has bounced around for a while. It’s settling at around $2.35, +/-. It still jumps quite a bit at Valero stations (a refiner brand), with somewhat time related but lower changes at other stations.
I don’t want to be deep enough in the news to see what might be “causing” these changes. Fortunately we don’t use much fuel anyway, so instead of being a major issue with commuting, it’s more of an academic subject for me.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 8, 2024, 09:27 AM
Instacart does Costco. Sometimes that's the only way to see what's actually in stock at the local store. Costco still thinks it's 2005 and that people want to go to a physical store and browse to see whether or not their desired items are available.
To be honest, sometimes I DO want to actually look at stuff to decide if it’s what I want. But not usually Costco-type stuff.
Fuel prices aside, does anyone else see stations with car washes doing promotions? Around here I see two types: fill up and get a discount on the car wash, or (a more recent thing) buy a car wash and get a discount on the gas.
$2.99, but I didn't have cash and ponied up $3.07.
The only stations here that have different cash/credit prices are truck stops, and only at the diesel semi pumps. Cash/credit prices for passenger cars here disappeared about the same time pay-at-the-pump appeared.
There’s got to be some sort of law behind that. I can’t imagine everyone deciding to do it voluntarily.
I seem to recall there being some sort of legislation banning cash/credit pricing for consumer items, but there are too many cobwebs in my head to be sure.
I definitely recall tv commercials back in the day for (I think) a local furniture store where they declared “there’s always a discount for cash.”
From what I can figure, the higher credit card price is an attempt to get truckers to sign up for a chain's specific fuel card so they can pay with card and still get the "cash" price. I don't think anyone's actually taking $1000 out of the ATM next to the register just to get the cash price.
every gas station here has cash/credit pricing, never mind the store cards BS etc... credit card companies take their cut and gas stations would prefer not to share.
Our local baseline prices jumped about 40-50¢ just about at the same time that the National Weather Service forecasts started talking about freezing temperatures. Coincidence? Not a chance.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 17, 2024, 12:19 PM
88 Octane E15 is running about $2.20 here, regular is about $2.30 at the right station. We're dangerously close to the $1 range, I can't believe the cartels are letting it get this low in an election year, especially when 98% of the complaints about the current administration are gas prices being too high.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 17, 2024, 12:27 PM
Originally Posted by subego
Sometimes I wonder if I’m on the spectrum. Do you ever wonder this?
Funny - last week was my 4th visit with my therapist, and she asked me the same question. I'm just wondering how many minutes into our first visit she was able to call it.
We’re ALL on the spectrum. Or more accurately were all on a variety of spectra…. This is an actual professional statement.
Anyway, our local prices are still in the “let’s soak people because they’re cold” range. Not high enough to call it “disaster profiteering”, but high enough to notice.
Of course the self service pumps still have their 8086-based little digital brains asking 20 questions before you can actually pump the gas, so you feel like you could wind up looking like Nicholson at the end of The Shining, frozen next to a pump.
Slightly side note: I HATE both “buy our bogus fuel system additive through the pump” pitches AND the “gas pump radio/TV” crap that a lot of places run. I do NOT care what your programmers think the “hottest songs of the week” are, I just wanna get gas so I can go do what I want to do.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 18, 2024, 10:22 AM
Some of those pumps have a secret mute button, just start mashing the screen-side buttons until they shut up. Doesn't always work. I've seen a few stations that actually have the decency to label which one is mute.
Some of those pumps have a secret mute button, just start mashing the screen-side buttons until they shut up. Doesn't always work. I've seen a few stations that actually have the decency to label which one is mute.
Laminar and andi, thanks. I usually just try to ignore the stupidity, but being able to mute it feels like I have a bit more control. And I would hope that how often their programming gets muted is something the programmers collect. Because they should know how irritating their stuff is. Bleah…
At the car wash I go to in the city. I’m sure I’ve mentioned, this place does in fact have a full service island, but are obviously afraid to tell you how much. Next time I’ll try to remember to check the pump.
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Last edited by subego; Mar 30, 2024 at 10:10 AM.
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Wow! Are those prices substantially higher because they’re in Chicago proper, or because it’s a name-brand station?
Around here regular bounced up to about $3.00+ for a short time, then vacillated (because fluctuated sounds too benign) up and down based on whether Mercury was in Gatorade or something…. It’s settled to somewhere around $2.80+ at most places in my local area, and has only varied by a few cents now and then.
I got tired of trying to do a superscript 9 on my iPad, so you get “+” instead, and I think everybody will understand…
This place is in a fairly nice neighborhood, and the nearest competitor is a half-mile away. I’m sure those are big drivers. On the negative side, it faces only one arterial street, and it’s nowhere near an Interstate.
Google says it’s $4.10 at the Mobil in the city I generally reference. That’s kitty-corner to a Costco.
Gotta do what you can to compete across from a Costco. I wouldn’t want to set up a hot dog stand anywhere near one; competing for gasoline customers is big business.
Oh, I forgot! Local prices (i.e., this place) for a car wash range between $10 and $23 plus tip. Definitely not the cheapest place, but it wins on convenience for me.
Almost out of gas, and needed a car wash, so I got killed at $5.16⁹ for regular. Only got 5 gallons. I went by the full service island, but no prices listed.
However, to my surprise the $15 car wash was free with the gas purchase, so it worked out.
The 1st Amendment gives us the right to assemble (protest). However, where you assemble matters a lot. Private property is a no-no. Not sure how public school property figures in - I'm no lawyer.
Regular is down around $3.10+ most places in my area, after bouncing up to about $3.40+ for a while a couple of weeks ago.
Free speech, even on private property, has protections against LEO hooliganism, as long as the free speakers follow certain rules. Those rules include moving along when directed (one doesn’t have to hurry away), and being polite, or at least not being jerk enough for that behavior to trigger a direct response.
The basic idea is supposed to be that authorities must actively direct protestors to go away. Not by email, not by running an ad in the paper, but right there where they are. I’ve seen reports of situations where small-town cops got into a lot of trouble by using bullhorns that distorted the sound enough that “directions to disperse” were essentially unintelligible. So from a practical, as well as legal standpoint, somebody has to say something like “I’m officer Smith from the Whatever Police Department. Everyone must clear this area immediately.”
A lot of protestors seem to miss the point that simply taking up space and making enough noise to get a large police response is a successful protest act. It gets covered by TV and newspapers, winds up on YouTube, and makes “The Man” pay attention. It also costs local departments a lot of extra payroll, local sanitation departments extra payroll to clean up, and means the locality and the local PD’s public affairs people have to step up and try to make it look like the police just politely asked for those protesters to go home. Repeat such things once a week, and you get on “the man’s” nerves enough to at least cause some acknowledgement that the public at large wants a change.
DePaul’s website says they have about 21,348 students. The pictures make it look like at least several hundred people have participated in protests by making and hanging signs. I will bet that if University President Manuel isn’t already trying to figure out how to get the students back in class and not publicly protesting, the school’s board of trustees is going to be on his back to fix it pretty quickly.
Disclaimer: I am specifically “anti killing people just to prove a point,” so I don’t take a stand either way…
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