RTibbs said:
Profit margin per gallon probably remains the same on a percentage basis not a cents per gallon basis. It is Wall Street driven. If a company's profit margin went from 5% to 2.5% the stock would take a hit. That is the more likely reason why profits are greatly up in relationship to an increased cost per barrel of oil. Volume might be up it is the percentage profit on higher cost driving those record profits.
Slow down. You are using logic that mixes and matches colors that don't go together.
Our basic thread is about the fact that ATLANTA has some kind of supply problem. Other than Nashville, which now seems to have returned to supply-and-demand equilibrium and maybe Tallahassee, we are not having this "stand in a line three blocks long" to buy gas. We have a very local problem. And that IS NOT Wall Street driven. You are talking about cents-per-gallon profits and profit margin as a percentage of sales, and all of that applies to "the big oil companies" and that is a Wall Street problem.
We seem to be experiencing a MAIN STREET problem. It is not the people of WALL STREET who are running down to the Quick Trip and buying a quarter tank of gas in Atlanta. Either when the gasoline leaves the refinery and enters the pipeline, or when the gasoline comes out of the pipeline into a tank farm at Doraville and at the moment it goes into the tanker truck, that product no longer belongs to "the big oil company" and Wall Street. It now becomes the product of Main Street and the local distributors and the local dealers.
Why are some local stations routinely, just like clockwork, re-supplied with a tanker load of gasoline, while down the street or a few miles away, a station sits there day after day, maybe getting one truck a week, not one truck a day? That is not a Wall Street problem, that is a main street problem.
Panic buying made a great scape-goat for 5 to 7 days. Once every main street customer in Atlanta made at least ONE trip to the pumps, we are back to needing to pump gas in amounts equal to usage. Why is the "panic buying" going to be blamed for 3 or 4 weeks of upheaval and standing in line? If we knew a hurricane was coming, we could see every household in town trying to carry home a 3 month supply of bread, or toilet paper, or bottled water. Stack it in the garage. Put it in the back bedroom. There is a lot of elasticity in the ability to hoard those products.
But gasoline? Ever try to put 3 months of gasoline in the trunk of you Lexus? Other than a couple of lawn mower supply containers, once every vehicle in the area has been to the gas station at least once and has gone from riding around with an average of a quarter tank on hand, to a new status of 7/8th full all the time, the panic buying has to be over. How can this problem possibly be going on for 3 to 6 weeks before it clears up?
Main Street ATLANTA and State of Georgia government have a problem. Wall Street has a problem, but it is NOT gasoline.
Now, if radio had some REAL NEWS DEPARTMENTS, some of them might have come to the same concept that I have, and might have been asking some questions of the oil distributors, the gasoline retailers, and the politicians that are not being asked, AND RADIO IS NOT TALKING ABOUT.
