by John Keller | Jul 2, 2012 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
In today’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, the US EIA reported regular unleaded fuel prices across the US dropped for the 13th consecutive week, this time by $0.081 per gallon to $3.356. Fuel prices haven’t been this low since before January 9, 2012. Unleaded regular fuel prices are now $0.223 per gallon lower than one year ago.
The Midwest and West Coast regions both saw a weekly drop of $0.108 per gallon, the biggest decrease of all the regions in the US. In the West Coast region, the average regular unleaded fuel price is now $0.47 per gallon less than one month ago.
Regular unleaded fuel price averages are lower than last year in every region except in the Rocky Mountain region, where fuel prices are $0.064 per gallon higher than last year.
Diesel prices dropped $0.03 per gallon, which is $0.202 per gallon lower than this time last year.
by John Keller | Jun 26, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Last year’s national retail fuel margins rose 25% to 18.8 cents per gallon.
According to Convenience Store News, the gross retail fuel margin in 2012 reached 18.86 cents per gallon nationally, compared to 15.03 cents per gallon in 2010. That’s a 25.5% increase in retail fuel margins year over year.
Meanwhile, the annual fuel volume gallons per store number was 4.1% lower year over year, falling to 1,205,095 gallons for 2011. That equates on average to 100,425 gallons per store per month across the nation. CSNews attributes the fuel volume drop to a slower economy, high unemployment, and more fuel-efficient automobiles.
From a fuel price management perspective, it is important to use these benchmarks to help gauge the relative performance of individual stores, markets, and overall chains.
by John Keller | Jun 18, 2012 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Yet another drop in US retail fuel prices this week according to the US Energy Information Administration, this time $0.039 per gallon. That makes it the 11th straight price drop since April 2, where prices for Regular All Formulations of retail fuel peaked this year at $3.941. The last time regular unleaded fuel prices were at this level was February 13, 2012.
Fuel prices dropped in every PADD region except for the Midwest PADD2 where retail fuel prices were up $0.02 per gallon.
The largest fuel price drop for the week was in the West Coast PADD region where fuel prices dropped $0.129 to $3.964 per gallon. This is the first time regular unleaded fuel has been under $4.00 per gallon since February 20 of this year.
by John Keller | Jun 14, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Retail Fuel Margins
In the Casey’s fiscal report today, the company announced retail fuel margins were at $0.137 per gallon for the quarter, down nearly $0.02 per gallon from last year. But same store fuel gallons sold were up 2.5% over a year ago.
Corporate goals for 2013 include increasing same store fuel gallons sold by 1% with an average retail fuel margin of $0.14 per gallon.
From a fuel price management perspective, it’s clear as the c-store quarterly results come in that last quarter was a tough period for retail fuel margins. Some c-stores managed to weather the storm with solid fuel volume numbers while others did not fare so well.
This balancing act between retail fuel margins and fuel volumes continues to drive the need for a robust fuel price management system that allows you to analyze the market trends, deploy optimized fuel prices quickly, and confirm that the optimized retail fuel prices are really getting to the street.
by John Keller | May 9, 2012 | Fuel Price Optimization, Retail Fuel Margins
In its Q1 financial report, Susser Holdings reported retail fuel margins for the quarter were at $0.133 per gallon, down $0.02 from last year, but up $0.01 from the average Q1 results over the past five years.
Retail fuel gallons sold increased 8.8% compared to last year. Average gallons sold per store per week improved 5.8% to approximately 30,000 gallons, or approximately 133,000 gallons per month per store. That average store per gallon figure is approximately 7% above the national store average according to NACS. Q1 is typically Susser’s lowest volume quarter, due to seasonality.
Susser operates 540 stores under the Stripes brand. Susser expects to open 25-35 new dealer sites this year.
by John Keller | Apr 23, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Retail Fuel Margins
The American Petroleum Institute reported that gasoline deliveries, a measure of consumer gasoline demand, increased 3.0% to 9.0 million barrels per day, the second monthly increase in demand since February 2011.
From a fuel price management perspective, the fuel volume sales benchmark is higher year over year.
