by John Keller | Sep 20, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
According to the latest OPIS report, the average retail fuel margin across the US had the highest weekly jump since January. The average retail fuel margin jumped $0.061 per gallon this week, and now stands at $0.267 per gallon. That is the highest margin average since August 1 this year.
The year to date average increased slightly to $0.188 per gallon, and the Q3 average increased to $0.239 per gallon. The six week average is now $0.223.
The current retail fuel margin is now $0.027 per gallon higher than last year at this time.
With one week remaining in the quarter this year, it’s certain we’ll have the highest quarterly retail fuel average in Q3, compared to Q2 and Q1.
by John Keller | Sep 15, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Brian Milne, Energy Editor for Schneider Electric, contributed another excellent update on Convenience Store Decisions today.
From a fuel price management perspective, the key takeaways are as follows:
- Brent crude oil dropped into the mid $90s bbl, below $100 bbl for the first time in over a year.
- West Texas Intermediate traded at $90.43, the lowest since May 2013.
- Retail fuel prices are likely to drop as much as $0.25 or more over the next 6-8 weeks.
We know that with the summer travelling season behind us, the annual seasonal trend should show us lower volumes from here through the end of the year. If Mr. Milne’s prediction holds true, and retail fuel margins increase as retail fuel prices drop, we’re heading into a season of strong retail fuel margins through Q4. In 2013, retail fuel margins hovered in the $0.188 to $0.191 range throughout the fourth quarter, and we didn’t see such margin increases. Hopefully 2014 will prove to be more profitable.
by John Keller | Sep 12, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
The OPIS report today showed the average retail fuel margin across the US raised $0.011 per gallon this week to hit $0.206 per gallon. That is slightly under the equivalent week last year, when the average retail fuel margin was $0.211 per gallon.
The year to date average stands at $0.185 for the third straight week. The average margin for the quarter dipped $0.003 to $0.237 per gallon. The six week average is $0.224, reflecting a fourth straight weekly drop.
The average for the quarter last year ended at $0.207, so with two weeks remaining, it looks like we’ll beat that margin this year.
by John Keller | Sep 12, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News
The Pinnacle Summit 2014 event in Dallas this week provided the perfect venue for Pinnacle customers to learn more about the upcoming multi-faceted PriceAdvantage integration. Response to the integration announcement was overwhelmingly positive.
The Pinnacle integration is scheduled for release in Q4 of this year and includes the following elements:
- Pinnacle Palm POS: PriceAdvantage price changes can be executed at the Palm POS. This is now the sixth POS system that works with PriceAdvantage.
- Pinnacle Palm POS: PriceAdvantage receives periodic volume feeds from the Pinnacle tank monitor web service to allow fuel analysts to see fuel sales in near-realtime and make adjustments to fuel pricing strategies throughout the day; get aggressive with margins to make up lost volumes from the morning so as to regain those volumes during the evening commute; leave prices alone if volumes remain strong despite competitive market moves downward.
- Pinnacle Manager Workstation: PriceAdvantage collects fuel and merchandise sales by store for performance reporting to understand customer profiles and market trends in consumer behavior. These kinds of reports can help understand whether or not, and to what degree, fuel sales impact in-store sales.
The folks at Pinnacle are working closely with the PriceAdvantage team, and the upcoming solution promises to be very powerful.
by John Keller | Sep 5, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
The OPIS report today showed the average retail fuel margin across the US dropped again this week, making it the fourth consecutive decrease, and the fifth in six weeks.
The average retail fuel margin now stands at $0.195 per gallon, down $0.016 per gallon since last week. The year to date average held steady at $0.185, while the Q3 average dropped slightly to $0.240 per gallon. The six week average took a hit as well, decreasing to $0.235 per gallon.
The average retail margin this week still stands $.014 above the equivalent Friday last year. But in 2013, we saw three weeks of margin gains through September, rising a total of $0.111 per gallon. We can only hope we’ll see a similar trend this year.
by John Keller | Sep 5, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
There’s a great article on CNBC about how “mom and pop shops are flying to the cloud“, explaining how small businesses are now able to leverage cloud technology and bypass large infrastructure investments to level the playing field against much larger companies.
Nowhere are we seeing better examples of this than in the c-store industry, where c-store chains of 100 stores and under are using PriceAdvantage for fuel price management.
Back in early January of 2012, Parker’s was an early adapter of PriceAdvantage in the cloud, managing retail fuel pricing for their stores. Then it was Volta Oil in June of 2012 for their 60 stores, followed by Flyers Energy for all their locations in December, 2012. Then in 2013 it was five more c-store chains deploying PriceAdvantage in the cloud, including Kocolene, Family Express, Slidell Oil’s Purple Cow Stores, Vintners Distributors, and Sam’s Mart.
In 2014 we’ve added several more PriceAdvantage customers to our cloud environment, including Pic-n-Pac, Speedy Q Markets, J & H Oil, and Kwik Chek Food Stores.
Our cloud customers love that they can leave the infrastructure setup to the PriceAdvantage team, and have their fuel price management solution up and running so quickly. Upgrades to new versions are a snap as well, and require little to no IT resources on their end. And since all our cloud customers are using Rackspace servers, we can all trust that the data is safe and secure.
Gone are the days when only the largest companies can afford the investment required to install and maintain a robust fuel price management system. The cloud solution of PriceAdvantage with Rackspace makes it affordable to everyone.
