Bob Collins
“How do convenience stores decide when to change the price of gasoline?” a passenger in the NewsCutMobile asked this afternoon.
Easy enough. When the price of crude rises, the employees run out to change the sign. When the price of crude drops, they walk.
There was a lot of running going on today. Crude oil prices skyrocketed in the last couple of days, to near $139 a barrel, after dropping to about $122 earlier this week. The average price of gasoline in these parts dropped to near $3.72 (How do you like that feeling when you see $3.72 posted and figure, “Wow, at these prices I should fill up!”?)
The only thing that was preventing prices from increasing at the gas station where our friend pictured above works, was the wind. She kept trying to put the numbers up for the higher price, but the wind kept blowing them off her price-raising tool, momentarily frustrating her but — also momentarily — becoming the motorist’s best friend.
Ingenuity won out, as it usually does, and within a few minutes she had successfully raised the price of a gallon of gasoline from $3.72 to $3.89.
A barrel of crude, by the way, is now projected to hit $189 within a year. You know, at these prices …
