by John Keller | Aug 8, 2011 | Industry News
In today’s US Energy Information Adminstration weekly fuel price report, the USEIA revealed a $.04 drop for the national average price of Unleaded Regular fuel. The US national average retail fuel price of unleaded gasoline now sits at $3.67/gallon, a gallon of midgrade dropped to $3.79, and a gallon of premium dropped to $3.92.
All regional areas saw fuel price decreases except for the Rocky Mountains, who saw a $.01 increase. The Gulf Coast and the Midwest each saw a $.05 decrease.
As for individual states, Minnesota had the largest fuel price decrease of the week, where prices lowered $.09/gallon for unleaded, with an average price of $3.73/gallon. All states now have Unleaded averages under $4.00 for the first time in two weeks.
The highest average price in the nation for Unleaded continues to be in New York, at $3.99/gallon. In Chicago, a gallon of Unleaded is priced the highest in any major city, at $3.96 per gallon which is $.05 less than last week.
by John Keller | Jul 19, 2011 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. in their quarterly report announced that US retail fuel margins for the past three months were $.14 per gallon. That’s a decrease of 1.2% compared to the same time period last year.
For the 12 months ended April 25, retail fuel margins were $.1579 per gallon, up from $.1451 for the same 12 months the previous year.
For the three months ended April 25, Couche-Tard retail sales in the US were approximately 145,000 gallons per month per site. Same-store US motor fuel volume was up .3% for the quarter.
According to NACS, the average US c-store sells 121,000 gallons of fuel per month annually. That means over the past three months, Couche-Tard stores sold about 20% more than the US national monthly average.
Couche-Tard currently has a total store count of 5795.
by John Keller | Jul 18, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
Walmart joined the retail fuel price loyalty game this summer, partnering with Murphy Oil to offer $.10 discounts on fuel when the purchase is made using one of the Walmart payment cards. Loyalty reward incentives are becoming mainstream across retail fuel c-stores and grocery store chains.
So the question is, how can the fuel manager compete? The answer lies in understanding the fuel pricing strategy at Murphy.
Murphy focuses their fuel price management solution around the urgency of fuel price changes. At Murphy, the fuel price strategy is a volume game. Murphy uses price as their number 1 advertising, as their billboard. Murphy advertises their price on enormous gas price signs, projecting such confidence that the consumer believes Murphy must have a low price since the sign is so bold. Murphy has reached such operational efficiencies in the fuel price change process, they can react extremely quickly to hourly wholesale price fluctuations. Murphy routinely changes fuel prices 2-3 times per day to squeak out the highest possible volume and profit hour by hour, based on these hourly wholesale price fluctuations. Speed to the street wins. When wholesale prices go up, retail price changes can happen almost immediately. When wholesale prices go down, Murphy can make it very difficult on the stores around them by dropping retail prices right away. Murphy sells such high volumes of fuel, the difference of a fraction of a penny, multiplied out times every gallon sold across their enterprise, yields huge profits.
The only way to compete against Murphy is to implement a fuel price management solution that watches Murphy prices like a hawk. Subscribe to the OPIS Radius report and get pricing feeds througout the day. Track every Murphy price move by allowing store and territory managers in the field to quickly report new Murphy prices to headquarters, or better yet, empower these managers to use their mobile device to change prices immediately when Murphy moves. Then the fuel manager can know what’s happening in the field in real time, and analyze store performance in terms of my price vs. competitor price, and gallons sold as compared to the same day of the previous four weeks. With this fuel price management solution, fuel managers can quickly make adjustments to their Murphy competitor strategy, and maintain the strategy that makes sense, whether it is matching Murphy, or staying within the price differential that the market will bear.
by John Keller | Jul 18, 2011 | Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
In today’s US Energy Information Adminstration weekly fuel price report, the USEIA revealed a $.04 increase for the national average price of Unleaded Regular fuel. That’s an $.11 increase over the past two weeks. The US national average retail fuel price of unleaded gasoline now sits at $3.68/gallon, a gallon of midgrade rose to $3.79, and a gallon of premium rose to $3.93. These prices now reflect levels not seen since mid-June.
The regional area hit hardest was the Lower Atlantic, where the average price for unleaded rose $.07 to $3.72/gallon. The region with the lowest increase was the “West Coast Less California” region, where prices were unchanged from last week, remaining at $3.69.
As for individual states, Texas had the largest fuel price increase of the week, where prices rose $.08/gallon for unleaded, with an average price of $3.65/gallon.
The highest average price in the nation for Unleaded is now in New York, up $.06 reaching $3.97/gallon. In Chicago, a gallon of Unleaded is priced the highest in any major city, at $4.02 per gallon.
by John Keller | May 24, 2011 | Industry News
The American Petroleum Institute reported that in April 2011, total demand for distillate fuel rose 15 percent to 4.27 million barrels a day, while consumption of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel increased 26 percent to average 3.42 million barrels a day.
Gasoline pump prices rose 6.6 percent last month, which slowed demand 2.2 percent to 8.91 million barrels a day from the same month last year.
Fuel demand increased in April as economic growth fueled diesel consumption by truckers, Bloomberg reports.
This article was reported by NACSOnline here.
by John Keller | May 16, 2011 | Industry News
According to an article on MarketWatch, several companies reported retail fuel sales in April were as much as 4% lower than in March. The article specifically mentions Marathon Oil Corp., Tesoro Corp., and Delek US Holdings, Inc.
High fuel prices were to blame for the drop in fuel volume, according to the company statements. Read the entire article here.
In this shrinking fuel market environment, Fuel Managers must fight for volume market share by investing in fuel price management solutions that allow for constant monitoring of competitor pricing, fuel replacement cost, optimization strategies, volume history vs. target, and price change processes.
