Comment on the July 10 prediction: 3/4 CORRECT, 1/4 WRONG again. There was a price hike on Thursday to $3.59 here in Michigan, with a higher price than predicted. But, there was no price hike on Lake Michigan Drive (more on that below), and no price hike as far as I can tell in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which I also monitor. But if you filled up Thursday morning, you probably got a deal.
Sunday, July 15, 2012, 7:45PM: On Thursday, a brand new Speedway opened up on Lake Michigan Drive, replacing the old Speedway on the same site. This was the same day as the $3.59 hike, and I can imagine the manager of Speedway wanted some extra business that first day, so they matched the $3.33 of the Family Fare across the street, rather than use the price sent in from Big Red Headquarters. So, now that we have six gas stations along that corridor (BP, Family Fare, Speedway, Citgo, Marathon, and Meijer) — the most that I can ever remember — it will be fun to see if we get some gas war dynamics like the good people of Kentwood and Wyoming enjoy along 44th street. As I post this, the LMD Speedway has the lowest price in Grand Rapids: $3.31 a gallon, beating $3.38 in Kentwood. Game on!
This ought to be fun with the Family Fare gas station across the street from a Speedway. Family Fare offering its gas discount slips for people who buy groceries there that range anywhere from 5 cents to 50 cents off a gallon of gas, Speedway will be doing its level best to keep competitive to match prices. I like this game!
SW Ohio jumping to $3.599 right now.
Why??
Indiana is about to as well.
The only issue with matching FF pricing is those slips though. Less and less people are using them as you have to spend $50 to get 5 cents off, which equals about $1.00 savings for me on 20 gallons of gas, vs. if I were to pay about 25% less for the same groceries at Meijer. Way cheaper to nix the slip and get groceries elsewhere. Meh- not really worth it for the savings on the slip. If they match the price on the wall, that’s apples to apples… This will be interesting.
Toledo reset to $3.599 at some point this afternoon. (The prices were still down at 10am.)
Now what’s their excuse?
You say Indiana and Ohio reset to $3.599 on Monday. Michigan got its reset to $3.599 today, Thursday, 3 days later (Michigan’s prior reset occurred exactly a week earlier on Thursday, July 12).
Typically, Ohio resets are 5–15¢ lower than Michigan and Indiana due to Ohio’s lower gas taxes. Cincinnati has been the highest priced metropolitan area in Ohio for a while now, with prices often higher than those in Michigan, as I have pointed out in several prior posts. It looks like Cincinnati prices have been higher since around Memorial Day: http://www.GasBuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=Toledo&city2=Columbus&city3=Cincy&crude=n&tme=6&units=us
As our gasoline is blended by federal mandate with 10% ethanol, higher corn prices due to drought will help keep our gas prices up this fall and winter: http://www.wwmt.com/shared/newsroom/top-stories/stories/wwmt_vid_3057.shtml
September Chicago Board of Trade corn futures settled today up 12’6 to 807’6, but they are down 6’0 in after hours trading. I think that 807’6 may mean $8.076 per bushel, so 12’6 would mean 12.6¢. How many bushels does it take to make 1/10 gallon ethanol?
Shares of Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) stock closed today down $1.32 (2.82%) to $45.51. On Monday, June 4, MPC was $34.28. If you bought MPC stock on that day, you’d be up by 32.8% now. You wouldn’t want to buy the stock now, because today it hit a 52 week (1 year) high. The 52 week low was on September 30, 2011, so late this September, when gas prices are typically on a free fall, should be a good time to buy MPC. Marathon’s last dividend was 25¢ per share on May 14. It would be cool if Speedy Rewards points could be redeemed for a share of Marathon stock. All the smart people would be redeeming their points in late September, though I guess if too many people did it, the following year the market price might go up in anticipation of lots of people redeeming their points at that time.
Greedway spiking again today.
$3.599 again in Ohio.
Totally uncalled for.
Greedway hiked up to 3.669 here in Traverse City, MI. I dont get it why. The spike line was at like $3.40 and they were at $3.539.
It’s either related to the drought or solar flares…
Am I the only one wondering how is it that crude prices are relatively stable yet gas prices are spiking at an alarming frequency?
@ChrisDG74: +1!
Shoulda filled-up this morning!
Fortunately, it seemed to me that last week’s spike didn’t last long–the prices were starting to dip within a couple days in the usual lower-priced areas of the Toledo metro. Even the stations in the “moneyed” areas got as low as $3.409 before this morning.
Just my gut feeling that the highest prices in Toledo metro will be back to between $3.439 and $3.499 by the weekend, if not a little lower, unless the Middle-East goes kablooey, a storm forms in the Gulf, if (heaven forbid) some sort of attack hits the Olympics, or whatever.
yeah wholesale prices drop almost 20 cents but greedway goes up almost that much… well need more money, the election is coming up and they need to pay to continue to have “Our” elected officials look the other way
I did top off @ $3.259 at the UDF on Rt 4 and Kemper Rd (Springdale, Ohio).
$3.65 this afternoon!!!
The last 2 times I received the Meijer Alert the Speedway in Ann Arbor – 4001 S State St & W Ellsworth Rd did not spike. It was at 3:40 on my drive home and Gas Buddy still has it at 3:40 this morning. Are the gas stations no longer playing follow the leader and making it harder for us to schedule our fill-ups at the bottom end of the price yo-yo? I have $1.90 coming off my next Kroger fill up, but I didn’t bring the gas cans to get the 35 gallons, as I figured I had a few more days for gas to drop another dime, since we just had a reset late last week.
Here is the “excuse” for the gouge yesterday. A “glitch” at the Whiting BP facility.
http://cincygasprices.com/blogs/Glitch-at-refinery-causes-Great-Lakes-to-see-price-spike/59323_506294/index.aspx
And, of course, Whiting is the sole supplier of gasoline to the entire ‘affected’ area.
Come on people…
Hey, do we have a gas hike coming by Monday? because if I did the equation right for the spike line then the spike line would be at $3.6267 because of the big gain on the Chicago spot today. A hike to $3.799 to $3.899?