98 fuel,14cents per litre lol

[FGX335]

Originally Posted by STINKY NINJA

I would have been on it like a fat kid on a cupcake if I had the chance.
Back on the fuel price,if servos only make 1.5 cents per litre why is it that some servos can be 20 cents cheaper than others some days,had it the other day at my local servo,$1.30 odd for 98 while the others were all $1.50ish,surely they wont take a 20 cent loss per litre to make a few bucks on cans of cool drink?
How is that explainable?

They can and will. When the price goes up, the margins can be pretty good, but of course you only get minimal traffic. Then one particular brand or an independent wants to get an advantage, and drops 1c. As the Manager, we had to drive around to all of our competitors, check the pricing on their boards, and report back to the boss. He would then advise if we would match, or to hold where we were. We never dropped first, and were always reactive to pricing.

So when you are at your cheapest, you are certainly losing coin, but it balances out over the week to give you an average profit of 1.5c/L. I worked at a site where we could make 3.3c/L, but only because it was the only servo within a 10 minute drive and we would sell over 1m litres of fuel a week. Then the other guys moved in one by one, and the site was a shadow of its former self.

Being reactive to the market, the other guys would put their price up, and if you were the only one on, the sheer number of customers meant that you couldn't change the price (manual price boards). You can't up the price on the bowser because it is illegal, and you can't run out and change the board because you are getting snapped by customers. You would wait for a small break in the queue, run like a man possessed, change the price board, tend to the remaining customers, then activate the price change on your console. Fun times!

We actually sold LPG at a loss, we were told it was for the tax credits.

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by bazza91

True. I hadnt factored in the cost of land. Slipped my mind apparently.

Personally wouldnt ever get into the petrol game myself.

If i was going to run a passive business it would definitely be storage units. Easiest business by far.

Now if only i could afford to build some......

Build? Nah some guy next to the railway I drive got about 20 or so shipping containers put into his backyard. I later found out that he was starting a storage business in his backyard. Apparently the neighbours were not happy about it though. Not sure if he ever got it up and running, but the containers have been there for over a year now.


As for making 1.5c a litre, I am guessing big chains make more, or at least don't mind the lost with the 4c a litre discount they offer if you spend $30 in their supermarket. A local independent servo was accepting any fuel discount docket from any supermarket. Guess he had a plan that it was more profitable to cut his price by 4c.

[STINKY NINJA]

The servo who has cheaper fuel is Caltex,theres mostly at least 1 or 2 a week who are 10 cents or more cheaper,sometimes the line of people is not worth saving 2 bucks a tank

[FGX335]

Originally Posted by Ben73

As for making 1.5c a litre, I am guessing big chains make more, or at least don't mind the lost with the 4c a litre discount they offer if you spend $30 in their supermarket. A local independent servo was accepting any fuel discount docket from any supermarket. Guess he had a plan that it was more profitable to cut his price by 4c.

Coles and Woolies make the money in their stores, the fuel discount is to keep you shopping with them. And you've probably seen the Coles Express Shell sites upsell like crazy, trying to offset the loss made by the discount. Makes me hate filling up there, if I wanted the chocolates I would have bought them. I was never into upselling unless the deal was good (story in next post).

I was with Mobil Quix and we had over 330 stores nationwide. We may not have set the price in the market, but we were always quick to match to stay competitive. All of the half decent sites became 7 Eleven, the rest were sold off or torn down, when the business was sold a few years back.

As for old mate independent, he must be a crazy sumbitch, or he has a way of making up the loss. Does he upsell everything? You can't trade like that forever unless there is a bigger end game.

[FGX335]

Now for the other story:

We used to sell 600mL Coke bottles for $2.09 (shows you how long ago this was), but there was a deal with the Coke and a Mars Bar for $1.99. Effectively, you save 10c and get a free Mars Bar. But I had 17 people reject it in one shift alone, even when I tried to explain it to them. If I hadn't done that, I probably would have had double that number of people reject it.

Anyway, we were scored on our uptake vs regular sales, so it made sense to plug in the code for the deal instead of scanning the Cokes. The till balanced perfectly because I kept a track of the number of deals I'd done in cash, and let people go when they were short of coin and were going to use a $50 or $100 to pay. And our stocktake ended up with 17 extra Mars Bars on the shelf to offset the grubs who would shoplift. Win win!