Gas prices

[xjeepguy]

There is almost no instances where traffic goes through Kelowna. Osoyoos to Salmon Arm, sure. But those are not exactly major hubs, nor are they really outside the local geographic area.

In this respect, Merritt gas stations have to compete with Kamloops a lot more than Kelowna needs to compete with Kamloops.

Your saying because we use less fuel here , we pay more .

[Charlie01]

The thoughtfulness and dialogue coming out here is great to see. I think GF has merrit in her comments about taxes - they are high. Taking those taxes per litre a step further, let's think about the supply and distribution chain - kinda' like a loaf of bread from field to store shelf. We are pretty much all appalled at the visible tax on tax in regard to fuel that we pay at the pump, but we don't really think about how many times we pay tax on tax upon what's already taxed as something is moving along a production and distribution route. The costs that the first guy has to pay on his fuels is definitely passed along to the next guy in the chain and so on until at the end of the line, the final consumer is covering everybody's costs. GST, PST, HST or however the taxes are identified are supposed to be cash out/cash in, but in practiced reality at the time of invoicing, it seldom is accounted that way. As I mentioned, both levels of government do very well on fuel taxes all along the way, so I really can't see as they have strong motivation to correct or reform current accounting methods for their corporate friends, so long as those guys are collecting from somebody and passing a correct % of that up to government. The process of cost recovery and profit with each set of hands that a product moves through isn't a lot different for a loaf of bread or a litre of gas, except a lot more litres of fuel are consumed each day than are bushels of wheat.

I also think it's a bad policy for society to let any item that is required to some extent for provision of essentials to be at the mercy of the stock markets to establish base price. I know that is a touchy subject for some and might create a degree of negative comment or attack, but truly, the stock market deciding what ultimately Joe Average will have the cash flow to afford 3 or 6 months from now has not proven to be in the best interests of Joe Average. When I stop and consider how many people my few dollars of gas per day is expected to flow up to in order to provide a strong quality of life for them, who have absolutely nothing to do with the actual work of production and while they are providing little to nothing back to the economy of my country, aside from "handling" the paper and pricing of a commodity, I get a little angry.

This attitude of greed, "me first and who cares about you?" has become contagious beyond sense. So many don't want to just make a living, they want everything money can buy, plus money too and they want it now and no thought to the long term consequences for those paying to support the pyramid.

What can we do about it would be the logical question and that is one that no one person on their own can answer or do much about. That's what gives rise and consideration to the boycott idea, although boycott has to have massively organized and educated support to have meaning. That much energy might be better expended working on long term solutions.

I'm up in the Shuswap, gas is $1.299 in Salmon Arm, a little higher in Vernon but I haven't checked where it's at for a bit. Last winter gas out at Sicamous was running 5 or 6 cents a litre higher than Salmon Arm and the folks of Sicamous got tired of watching traffic drive on by while they either bought at home or drove to Forsest Grove or Salmon Arm for cheaper fuel. They spoke up as a group to the suppliers and I think their town counsil added their voice and presto - same pricing as Salmon Arm.

Used to be that the handful of independant gas stations (not part of the name brand franchises that have their sign prices dictated to them from a corporate office) took some honour in being able to create the price wars. They buy the same gas as everybody else, but are not beholden to a head office and so pricing a penny or two below the franchise stations got things rolling and they did well by volume sales. The greater area locals who used to own independant stations like Stampede Esso in Falkland, FasGas in Dallas, Forest Grove near Grindrod and sometimes even Silver Creek Store were savvy enough and civic minded enough, not to mention brave enough to do just that - start wars and keep prices a little more affordable and people used to support them with loyal business. Seems times have changed. There are still a few independants, but as an example right now, even though Salmon Arm is $1.299 and Vernon is I think maybe around $1.329, Silver Creek Store is $1.389, Forest Grove is pricing to whatever Grindrod is, Dallas prices to Kamloops and Stampede Esso was sold, new owner priced to Vernon and the place went broke. I think it was Nab who earlier in this thread mentioned the usual profit per litre for the stations was around 3 cents a litre and now seems to be more like 12 cents/litre. In the case of a place like Silver Creek, the owner obviously wants as much as possible, but I will bet volume is down a lot. Until getting as much as a person can as fast as possible type of thinking changes, I think the days of gas price wars being a local correction tool are gone.

A number of years back when diesel skyrocketed the first time, truckers organized and eventually managed to get a bit of short term relief. I don't know what happened to the brave among those fellows or why they eventually got sucked up into the status quo, aside from the fact a lot of them went broke, however they did demonstrate that at least for a while that standing together and speaking up did serve a purpose. Might be some food for thought in there.

[Charlie01]

Link is to some guideline approximations of what taxes at the pumps are across Canada.

http://www.bcgasprices.com/can_tax_info.aspx

[Charlie01]

PM noted and thanks.

Yes, I probably should have said that I think taxation is only part of the puzzle in regard to high gas prices. But I was getting darned wordy!

Taxes are necessary to make organized society work and I don't dispute that. I could say I have some problems with how tax dollars are spent both Federally and Provincially and I'd end up writing a book on those thoughts. I'm kinda' for our own country first.

Anyway, yup, tax is necessary but that isn't the only thing driving price, it's just a nice little coffer-filler for government and I would like to see our governments spending money smarter and for Canadians. As for everything else, including the commodities markets? There is an awful lot of room to address high prices there for sure and maybe even some room to top up the government coffers if a little was trimmed off what is expected to come from the consumer.

[Glacier]

Your saying because we use less fuel here , we pay more .

No, I'm saying that because we have less competition with surrounding regions, we pay more. A large population living with poorly planned and inefficient roadways means we do our fair share of fossil fuel burning.

If a gas project in the Peace River requires 30 supply trucks a day from Vancouver, they will either head up the canyon and up through the Cariboo, or they will head through Merritt, Kamloops, Jasper, and up through Grand Praire. If Merritt raises their prices too much truckers won't stop there. Instead, they'll stop somewhere else.

Kelowna doesn't have this problem because it's so insular with respect to the road network, and since Xjeepguy is not going to zip up to Kamloops to fill up, gas stations in Kelowna have an easier time charging more for their product without losing customers.

[xjeepguy]

No, I'm saying that because we have less competition with surrounding regions, we pay more. A large population living with poorly planned and inefficient roadways means we do our fair share of fossil fuel burning.

If a gas project in the Peace River requires 30 supply trucks a day from Vancouver, they will either head up the canyon and up through the Cariboo, or they will head through Merritt, Kamloops, Jasper, and up through Grand Praire. If Merritt raises their prices too much truckers won't stop there. Instead, they'll stop somewhere else.

Kelowna doesn't have this problem because it's so insular with respect to the road network, and since Xjeepguy is not going to zip up to Kamloops to fill up, gas stations in Kelowna have an easier time charging more for their product without losing customers.

Guess I need to do what the rigs guys do , put 3 Tidy tanks in the pickup box and fill everything up off the rig tanks before I go home

[Crazy Horse]

Kelowna gets gas from the Kamloops rack for exactly the same price, and same taxes. The difference is the retail markup. Very low in Kamloops (actually too low for any independent to survive on) and very high in Kelowna( aprx. 10 cents/L)

[Charlie01]

You sound like you know what you're talking about Crazy Horse. It's nice to have factual information from somebody in the know. Thanks!

I guess the only thing that crosses my mind is when I've seen more than a 10 cent sread in price on a given day between Kamloops and Kelowna; how does that work?

[xjeepguy]

Kelowna gets gas from the Kamloops rack for exactly the same price, and same taxes. The difference is the retail markup. Very low in Kamloops (actually too low for any independent to survive on) and very high in Kelowna( aprx. 10 cents/L)

That is kind of what the point was I was trying to make was . If the rack price in Loops is .86 a liter , and the double bulker delivery rig says holds 120 m3 , there's no way that it costs that much extra to deliver it here , than it does to Merritt .
Its just simple greed .

[GordonH]

Interesting about Kamloops prices

Pump price is $1.239 per L

rack price for RUL is .867
taxes (without GST) .3117

= $1.1787

GST = .04335 (.867 x .05 = .04335 + 1.1787 = 1.22205)

for a difference of only .01695

How are station owners to survive on that, I suspect that owners must be getting some kind deal (on the rack price) we don't know about.

[Crazy Horse]

Stations nowadays make their profit on milk and chips. It is true that some retailers get a small discount off of rack.

[Captain Awesome]

Who the hell buys their overpriced crap "food"?

[hobbyguy]

The boycott idea I was thinking of did in fact recognize that you can't boycott the products. People need to buy gas to get work etc.

The idea was a randomized (you could use an old carnival wheel) boycott of a SINGLE producer. So you boycott just one major company, randomly selected. That way folks could say continue to buy gas/diesel at Esso/Chevron/Shell/Husky/etc while say Petrocan was boycotted.

As it stands now, price increases go straight to the bottom line and there is no real competition. A randomized single producer price based boycott that targets a single producer would at least introduce the concept that raising prices might not increase the bottom line, and could actually decrease it.

If a company like Petrocan got very little or no business for a few weeks, or unltil they dropped the price, I'm sure the boardroom would pay attention.

[Charlie01]

I don't think it's a bad idea to do something en masse to get the attention of the folks at the top of the chain. But I just have never heard of a case where the local single brand retailer boycott proved effective for very long or at all.

I do wonder if adopting the method that the folks at Sicamous employed last winter might have some merit. Rather than harming their local franchise station owner who has what he prices at dictated to him by an office in Calgary, when that guy is also a neighbour and member of their community; the community, en masse, including the owners of the local service stations and bulk supply distributor and with the support of their town counsil went directly to the head offices that own the names on the signs of the local services stations (ie: Husky, Shell, Esso and there was a PetroCan at the time) and asked for some relief - to be priced the same as Salmon Arm as the higher prices they had dictated to them from afar were hurting the local economy. They got what they asked for and Sicamous has remained the same as Salmon Arm ever since.

Maybe if a person had the names of 5 to 10% of the residents of the greater region, bonafide names that can be authenticated, along with a well written letter and the support of one or more of the local MLAs or possibly an MP and went directly to the owners of the supply line into our region we could get something of a reality check. We keep paying what they ask and grousing over it in ways that are easy to ignore. But when one of their own industry analysts is calling recent prices increase by it's proper name of greed, a door is open to say "Yeah. And we're tired of it." Some folks might think it's just fine to pay as much as makes them feel good, but I know most people are feeling it in a bad way and it does impact everything we need - not just want - but need. Surely there is some local MLA or MP who isn't feeling so smug in their current roll to maybe think it might be good for them to champion a cause that would benefit the people he represents?

[Glacier]

Gas is up 11 cents/litre this week. I paid 109.9 last friday, but it looks like I may have to pay 120.9 in a few minutes.