by John Keller | Feb 13, 2012 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Demand for ethanol fuel has dropped off dramatically since the tax credit expired earlier this year. The $.45 tax credit for ethanol fuel expired January 1, 2012.
In addition, an unfavorable currency exchange with Brazil has helped add to the overall ethanol fuel surpluses at plants across Iowa.
As demand wanes, and surpluses accrue, wholesale prices will have to adapt. We’ll keep an eye on the retail fuel pricing result. In the meantime, from a fuel price management perspective, expect lower ethanol fuel volume sales to be less than last year.
The Des Moines Register article reporting on the drop in ethanol fuel demand can be found here.
by John Keller | Feb 13, 2012 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
In today’s US Energy Information Administration “Today’s Gasoline Prices” report, the Rocky Mountain region shows average fuel prices for Regular Unleaded are $0.33 per gallon lower than the next lowest region. In the Rocky Mountains, average fuel prices for Regular Unleaded are $3.071 per gallon, compared to the Midwest region which is the next lowest region with Regular Unleaded fuel price averages of $3.407 per gallon.
As usual, the West Coast region has fuel prices where average Regular Unleaded is priced at $3.727.
by John Keller | Feb 10, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Longtime PriceAdvantage customer Fikes Wholesale, operating the c-store chain CEFCO Convenience Stores, had the highest percentage growth of store count across the entire convenience store industry from December 2010 to December 2011.
According to Convenience Store News, the company’s store count grew by 57.6% in 2011. Fikes added 72 stores during that time period, 71 of which were acquisitions. In January 2012, Fikes added another 63 stores, bringing the total to 257 stores across seven states.
Skyline Products is proud to have Fikes Wholesale fully deployed with PriceAdvantage for all CEFCO stores, bringing each group of new stores onto the PriceAdvantage solution within weeks of each acquisition. Key to the Fikes strategy is to immediately use PriceAdvantage Web for the newly acquired stores so they can quickly calculate new fuel prices and view daily fuel volumes and fuel margins at each store. Importing legacy store data from the old systems allows Fikes to see the history of each store. Then over the course of several weeks Fikes implements PriceAdvantage Enterprise to allow full control of fuel price changes to the signs, POS and pumps. Since both PriceAdvantage Web and PriceAdvantage Enterprise use the same database, there is 100% data continuity through the transition.
You can read the full Convenience Store News article < a href="http://www.csnews.com/top-story-fikes_wholesale_among_industry_s_top_growers-60461.html">here.
by John Keller | Feb 7, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Today in their Short-Term Energy Outlook report, the US Energy Information Administration announced they expect unleaded fuel prices for 2012 to average $3.55 per gallon. That would be a $.03 increase over the unleaded fuel price average in 2011. The USEIA expects that from April through September, fuel prices will average approximately $.07 per gallon higher than the overall average for the year. The report also says there is a 25% chance that average unleaded fuel prices will be above $4 per gallon in June.
From a fuel price management perspective, if these predictions prove to be true, 2012 fuel prices will not be enough different than 2011 to have a dramatic change on fuel volumes compared to 2011.
by John Keller | Feb 2, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
Chevrolet sold only 7,700 Volts for the entire 2011 year. That’s far below the target of 10,000. The trend continued into 2012, where in January Chevrolet sold only 603 Volts. The GM North America President blamed bad publicity from the government’s investigation into the fire risks.
By comparison, Nissan sold nearly 9,700 Leafs in 2011, and Nissan hopes to double that number in 2012.
From a fuel price management perspective, it’s clear that electric vehicles, while only slowly making traction in sales volumes, are steadily increasing. Clearly fuel price management strategies need to include electric vehicles longterm.
For more details, go to the Detroit News article here.
