by John Keller | Feb 22, 2012 | Industry News
The Federal Highway Administration reported that in 2011 Americans drove 35.7 billion miles fewer than in 2010. That’s a decline of 1.2%. The first half of 2011 showed a 1% decline, while the second half showed a 1.4% decline.
From a fuel price management perspective, the decline in miles driven helps explain the overall decline in fuel gallons sold. On a national level, the market for fuel continues to be more and more competitive. Fuel pricing strategies need to be a key focus in order to maintain optimized profits at each store and across all markets.
by John Keller | Feb 22, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Susser Holdings reported improved fuels volumes and retail fuel margins in their latest quarterly report.
Total fuel volumes for Q4 reached 200.1 million gallons. That’s a 9.7% increase in fuel volumes over the previous year. Average fuel gallons sold per store per week reached 28,900 gallons. That’s an increase of 7.2% over the previous year.
Retail gross retail fuel margins reached 18.6 cents per gallon, up from 15.0 cents per gallon the previous year.
At year end, Susser Holdings had 541 stores in operation.
by John Keller | Feb 21, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News
According to the latest US Energy Information Administration report, the Rocky Mountain fuel prices remain the lowest in the US, $0.37 lower than the next lowest region.
Average unleaded fuel prices in the Rocky Mountain region are at $3.097 while in the Midwest region, average unleaded fuel prices are $3.464. Average unleaded fuel prices in the West Coast region are at $3.896.
by John Keller | Feb 15, 2012 | Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Skyline Products would like to congratulate Parker’s on their new South Carolina c-store. We’re proud to have Parker’s as a PriceAdvantage fuel price management customer. Parker’s uses PriceAdvantage in the cloud to manage fuel prices and monitor company-wide fuels performance down to the store level.
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.
by John Keller | Jan 27, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
The annual OPIS Retail Year in Review & 2012 Profit Outlook report reveals key fuel price management information about the US market.
Chevron achieved the largest premium of all brands with at least 0.5% market share, garnering a 3.42 cents per gallon premium to typical competition. That’s a 10% increase from 2010.
Shell maintained the lead in overall market share, with BP ranking second. Both brands saw a drop in their market share in 2011.
Regular Unleaded grade gas had the highest percentage ever of fuel sold among the two or three street grades. The price of Premium widened from Unleaded with a spread of $0.27 per gallon over Unleaded by the end of 2011. Exxon had the largest spread for Premium with $0.286 spread over Unleaded.
