by John Keller | Jun 14, 2013 | Fuel Price Optimization, Retail Fuel Margins
According to OPIS, the average national US retail fuel margin dropped $0.064 per gallon this week. The drop this week brought the overall retail fuel margin average to $0.152 per gallon, the lowest in three weeks.
The year to date average retail fuel margin is holding steady at $0.170 per gallon. The quarter to date average retail fuel margin is down slightly at $0.183 per gallon. The six week average retail fuel margin is down $.002 per gallon to $0.163 per gallon.
Over the past nine weeks, there have only been two weeks of increases, with the remainder being decreases from the previous week.
There are only two weeks remaining in the quarter, and without drastic increases, average margins will not achieve the level seen at the end of Q1, where average margins were at $0.220 per gallon.
by John Keller | Jun 11, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Software, Industry News
In the NACS State of the Industry Summit there were several key fuel management highlights for the 2013 year.
- Gasoline consumption is up 1.3% year over year.
- Gasoline margins are up 3.6 cents per gallon for the first 12 weeks of 2013 year over year.
- Gasoline margins were at 16.6 cents per gallon for the first 12 weeks of 2013.
- The breakeven cents-per-gallon for last year improved to 9.21 cents, a 12% improvement.
From a fuel price management perspective, it is important to compare the results in your markets to these national industry standards. Perhaps individual markets are particularly competitive with margins and cannot match some of these statistical levels, but these industry standards provide a gauge and set of key performance indicators to use for measuring success.
Using these measurements as the basis to generate reports to reveal the success of your fuel organization can be time consuming if your fuel software is based on Excel. Even the most sophisticated homegrown systems can make it difficult to access reports that show relative performance of volume and margins for comparison sake. But with PriceAdvantage fuel software, heat maps and analysis views quickly allow you to slice and dice volume and margin information to see how a market of your stores is doing relative to another market, and which stores are shining stars vs. which stores are burdens bringing down overall performance.
With this information, your PriceAdvantage fuel management software allows you to adjust marketing and fuel pricing strategies to optimize performance at the store and market level, and maximize prices across the enterprise fuel system.
by John Keller | Jun 7, 2013 | Fuel Price Optimization, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
OPIS reported today that retail fuel margins held steady this week dipping only $0.002 per gallon across the USA. Average retail fuel margins now stand at $0.216 per gallon. The year to date average is up slightly to $0.171 per gallon, and the Q2 average is up slightly to $0.186 per gallon. The six week average is also up slightly to $0.165 per gallon.
This is good news for fuel retailers who are in great need to recoup the low margins of early and mid May.
From a fuel software perspective, these conditions continue to drive toward the need to keep a watchful eye, to make sure competitors are held in check, and to balance the fine line between fuel volume gains and maintaining fuel margins as long as possible.
by John Keller | May 31, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
According to the latest OPIS report, retail fuel margins saw their biggest increase in 12 weeks, with a $0.094 per gallon rise. Average retail fuel margins across the USA now stand at $0.218 per gallon, the highest margins all May.
Average year to date fuel margins were up slightly to $0.169 per gallon. Quarter to date fuel margins reversed their six week trend and increased to $0.183 per gallon. The six week average for fuel margins now stands at $0.161 per gallon.
A large part of this gain in fuel margins can be attributed to the mid-west refineries coming back online so that costs can come down, allowing fuel retailers to temporarily hold steady with retail fuel pricing and recoup their lower margins seen over the past month.
But traditionally these higher margins prove to be only temporary, as fuel retailers begin to drop their prices to gain a competitive edge and gain volumes. As always, retail fuel software is critical to win this cat and mouse game, balancing volumes and margins while remaining competitive and maximizing profits.
by John Keller | May 24, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Software, Retail Fuel Margins
According to the latest OPIS report, average retail fuel margins in the US were essentially unchanged this week. Retail fuel margins were up $0.001 per gallon to stand at $0.124 per gallon. Year to date retail fuel margins were down $0.002 to $0.167 per gallon. Average retail fuel margins for this quarter dropped $0.008 and now stand at $0.178 per gallon.
According to NACS, at these margins c-stores are operating at break-even levels at best, after all costs are taken into consideration. The mid-west refinery problems in the US are now clearing up, so that will provide cost reductions in the mid-west and Rocky Mountains, allowing c-stores to catch up even as they drop their retail prices. But it is this shift in cost and margins that require careful calculations to balance volumes with margins, and remain competitive while the market evolves.
Fuel software for retail fuel price management systems are the only way the fuel analyst can make the most profit in these turbulent times.
by John Keller | May 23, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News
Congratulations to Greg Parker, President and CEO of The Parker Companies and PriceAdvantage customer, for being named one of Georgia’s Power Players by Georgia Trend Magazine. It has been quite a year for Mr. Parker, as he was awarded Top Tech Executive at the CSNews CIO/Tech Summit in April.
The Parker Companies have been using PriceAdvantage as their fuel software to manage all aspects of their retail fuel management solution. The Parker’s fuel management system includes price change confirmation to the VeriFone POS, pumps, Skyline electronic gas price signs, and GasBuddy OpenStore. This is all made possible by the one click technology that is unique to PriceAdvantage.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have Parker’s as a partner and we look forward to the days ahead, as together we progress what is possible in the future of the convenience store industry.
