Thursday, April 29, 2004

(The following was posted yesterday at the grandrapidsgasprices.com site. I thought I knew how to update this web page from home, but I couldn’t.) Seems that Speedway is trying everything it can to improve its profit margin. Earlier this year, it appeared to me that it was trying to increase the profit per gallon from 20 cents to 25 cents, but the competition didn’t buy into it. Also, if you go back to the beginning of 2004, you see that the stations have been a lot quicker to “restore their prices”, with the profit per gallon getting down to about 10 cents before there is a price hike. That’s why we are getting one every week.Tuesday’s price hike to $1.89 … a lot of Speedway’s competitors didn’t match it, and the Speedway at Michigan and Fuller is back at $1.79. There was no corresponding price hike in Chicago, either.Now, this is what worries me … wholesale prices are up 6 cents since Friday. With my usual calculations, that would mean, if there is a price hike, the new price would be $1.94. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that they raise prices again tomorrow (Thursday) to $1.94, and the competitors will follow. WRONG-O. Prices have got down to $1.74 in Grand Rapids as of Monday morning.