Fluctuating Fuel Prices

AWD Chaser · 17-05-2006, 09:00 PM

Why is it on Monday, the fuel prices outside my work (Caltex, Weston) show $1.32.9, then Tuesday they jump to $1.39.9 and now Wednesday, they are back down to $1.32.5?

It's very frustrating as they are like 8cpl changes every day so far....

Falcon_Phill · 17-05-2006, 09:23 PM

it was 1.42 here the sunday, then sunday afternoon 1.27. wierd.

MO · 17-05-2006, 09:29 PM

It's all to do with the daily/hourly price fluctuation of a barrell of oil.

AWD Chaser · 17-05-2006, 09:32 PM

Well as far as I know, servo's are only allowed to update the price once every 24 hours.... but the jumps are stupid... I mean 8cpl per day..... Milk goes up 5c, and ppl complain... imagin the same ppl complain when milk prices change by 8c per day....

Wokkas · 17-05-2006, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John McMaster

It's all to do with the daily/hourly price fluctuation of a barrell of oil.

Yep! Supply and demand. Why can't people realise this when fuel prises sky rocket at times like Easter.............................

chich · 17-05-2006, 10:09 PM

I'm convinced the pricing is all fixed. I pass no less than 10 servos on the way to work everyday (45km) and get a good feeling of what occurs on a dialy basis. Take today as an example:

7am - average price was around 128.8 - 129.9
6pm - every single servo was at 139.9

I say the government needs to setup a watch dog to belt these b*stard oil companies senseless. There's making profit and then there's holding a gun to society's head.

fiery · 17-05-2006, 10:26 PM

Usually Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days here to get fuel.. so I am dreading to see what the prices are goin to be on Friday and Saturday (the 2 worse days)...
Today it was 1.37ish at most servo's... so can only gather it will possibly be around the 1.40 mark within 48hours....

The Monty · 17-05-2006, 11:58 PM

Every Tuesday its 120.9, and every Wednesday night it goes to 136.9L. Itll go back on Friday.

Smoked · 18-05-2006, 01:09 AM

48.5. Can anyone explain why LPG went up from 39.9 last week to over 10c more?
At this stage its not changing and althought its still cheaper, 10c for 70ltrs adds up significantly.

AWD Chaser · 18-05-2006, 02:10 AM

where is it 48????? it's 62.9 here.... don't tell me it all in transport....

LTDHO · 18-05-2006, 07:39 AM

Why did petrol go from 1.29 cpl @ 0700 yesterday to 1.40 cpl @ 1730 yesterday. Yup 11 cents in 10 hours.

The answer:
Because they can

mash85 · 18-05-2006, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chich

I'm convinced the pricing is all fixed. I pass no less than 10 servos on the way to work everyday (45km) and get a good feeling of what occurs on a dialy basis. Take today as an example:

7am - average price was around 128.8 - 129.9
6pm - every single servo was at 139.9

I say the government needs to setup a watch dog to belt these b*stard oil companies senseless. There's making profit and then there's holding a gun to society's head.

competition. my mate is a manager at a shell. if safeway up the road go up, generally they'll put theres up. Coles subsidise the price of fuel at certain levels. once they decide they'll no longer subsidise it, they recieve a call to put it up

djjase · 18-05-2006, 10:34 PM

Its all a load of crap. The petrol station buys thousands of litres when they fill up at a price from the oil companies. Those thousands of litres might last a week or few more. Oil prices go up bang up goes the price at the pump, even though they didnt buy the petrol at the higher price. Its not the oil company ripping us off, its the petrol station. They say there isn't much margin they make. If petrol stations werent making money they would shut down. Lets face it they make a nice profit putting the prices up and down every day. Its about time the Govt dropped the $0.40 exercise tax and stop petrol stations and oil companies ripping us off. Petrol should be at a set price until they have to refill their big barrels underground. I dont see many petrol stations lowering their prices when the price of oil goes down, but they are damn pretty fast at increasing it when the price of oil goes up

NZ · 19-05-2006, 04:19 PM

Maybe its not like that? I get along quite well with a guy at a shell servo ; once when i went in he told me he had just got a call to put the price up. It makes me think that the transactions are recorded and the fuel is payed for at a spot price plus the servo's margin. I know where I buy fuel from they are an independant shell retailer and the price only goes up after they buy a new load of fuel (its how sometimes premuim comes withing a couple of cents of ULP). For the franchise owners it may be different. Perhaps someone here in the know( not just someone who thinks they know) could give us the real deal. Fordfan86?

TheSneakiness · 19-05-2006, 04:22 PM

I can safely say that petrol has remained at a good price here for the past week and a bit.

Only fluctuated 3cpl on petrol. It's been hovering around $1.20/litre.

XR6Dan · 19-05-2006, 04:55 PM

I can see what would happen if the Government dropped the fuel excise - how long would it be fefore we pay the same but the money would go to the fuel companies and not the Government? I'd rather see it go to the Government.

chich · 20-05-2006, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mash85

Coles subsidise the price of fuel at certain levels. once they decide they'll no longer subsidise it, they recieve a call to put it up

Exactly my point... head office determines when and by how much prices increase and decrease by withdrawing support to their franchises. It isn't coincidence that every Wednesday Mobil, BP, Shell and Caltex sell at $139.9

FordFan86 · 20-05-2006, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by au3 chaser

Well as far as I know, servo's are only allowed to update the price once every 24 hours....

LOL
I could change the price every 60 seconds if I wanted (time for the puters to reset and new price to show up) The boss probably wouldn't be too thrilled tho, ditto for customers thinking "is this thing gunna blow up?" while the numbres count down...

Quote:

Originally Posted by NZ

For the franchise owners it may be different.

You got it pretty well spot on NZ, I get a message through, contains three (3) pieces of info. The buying price, the "discounted" price and the max price we can sell it at (can't go over this or we get in trouble). The "discount" is normally 0-11cents per litre (when it's 11 cents per litre is when the pumps will be at there lowest.. ie say 129.9, when they pull that "discount" we go up generally what the "discount" was and then some ie say 134.9), but really, that's just as it goes through the weekly cycle. We only make 2-3cents per litre no matter what the "discount" is.
The end result is try and make enough off one tanker load to buy the next tanker load... Prices don't really fluctuate with when the tanker comes in (for petrol atleast) When our gas price drops, if we have a tanker on the way we'll call him and tell him we don't want it so we (and the customer) get it at a cheaper price.
As for collusion (which carries some pretty hefty fines..)- it has been proved a couple of times that my boss has told me of. Pretty sure all it took was a phone call from one station to another asking there selling price... I can just about guarantee if any of you called a petrol station they won't (or at least shouldn't) tell you what the price is...
I don't understand half of it and I've been doing it for 2 1/2 years :S
(EDIT: My boss has been doing it 30 yrs and still doesn't understand most of it either..or why :S retail's a weird business, peopel do stupid things)
However it's not unusual for my boss to drive down the main road, note the price of other stations and send it into head office (generally if we are above their price.. they'll drop it)

djjase · 20-05-2006, 01:52 PM

So tell me then - how come the one on Today tonight can sell it for $0.15 / ltr cheaper and still make a profit ? If you only make 2-3cents margin then why are you still in business ? I am sure costs would be way more - ie salary, insurance etc.... surely we are all not the dumb. No business runs unless they make a nice profit. Its all about greed today, the oil companies, the banks, the food companies, they all make billions by slugging the consumer higher and higher. They want more and more and more and they dont care at what cost. We the consumers just put up with it, we keep paying the Bank Fees, we keep paying the high petrol prices, we accept the food companies are down sizing packages but still charging us more.

M14A-Mclaren · 20-05-2006, 02:06 PM

What I don't get is that when the international price of oil goes up they instantly put the price up, when the oil that is in transit, sitting in tanks and at the pump they brought before the price went up. You can bet that when the international price goes down they take a few of days to put it down at the pump.

chich · 20-05-2006, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djjase

So tell me then - how come the one on Today tonight can sell it for $0.15 / ltr cheaper and still make a profit ? If you only make 2-3cents margin then why are you still in business ? I am sure costs would be way more - ie salary, insurance etc.... surely we are all not the dumb. No business runs unless they make a nice profit. Its all about greed today, the oil companies, the banks, the food companies, they all make billions by slugging the consumer higher and higher. They want more and more and more and they dont care at what cost. We the consumers just put up with it, we keep paying the Bank Fees, we keep paying the high petrol prices, we accept the food companies are down sizing packages but still charging us more.

Its a well known fact that money isn't made on petrol - the margin is made in the store when you buy a magazine, mars bar, ice creams etc. In the past petrol was sold at the franchise owners and then this loss was reimbursed by the oil companies and i imagine this still stands today.

The price of everything keeps increasing and its not going to come down my friend. 20 years ago you could buy a decent house in Melbourne for $150,000 but now you need at least $500,000. An average family car was worth $15,000 however now its $40,000. Welcome to the 21st century..

AWD Chaser · 21-05-2006, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chich

Its a well known fact that money isn't made on petrol - the margin is made in the store when you buy a magazine, mars bar, ice creams etc. In the past petrol was sold at the franchise owners and then this loss was reimbursed by the oil companies and i imagine this still stands today.

The price of everything keeps increasing and its not going to come down my friend. 20 years ago you could buy a decent house in Melbourne for $150,000 but now you need at least $500,000. An average family car was worth $15,000 however now its $40,000. Welcome to the 21st century..

Inflation.

When my mum and dad got a house in Canberra in 1989, I think my dad was on about $20k thereabouts. So the house was equiv. to about 5 years pay. Now the same house is about $350000. Let's say I'm on $35k, the same house is worth 10 years of my pay... worse in other cities...

Falcon_Phill · 21-05-2006, 08:17 AM

its 1.26 in picton today. Cheapest its been in a while.

RG · 21-05-2006, 08:27 AM

To all those saying that the ACCC should step in and do something about price fixing, it doesn't work. A few servos up here in Ballarat got done for price fixing and recieved huge fines, you may remember this on the news a while back. But guess who is paying for those fines, we are. We haven't had any discounting on fuel in Ballarat for a long time now, we used to be around 3-4 cents more then Melbourne on average and sometimes even cheaper but now the price has not moved from $138/39.5 for ages and it is the same now at every servo.

OldManGhia · 21-05-2006, 08:56 AM

Petrol Pricing The plain facts....Caltex information on how fuel prices are calculated, taxes, rebates in some areas (8.9c in Qld)of Aus plus links to other sites showing petrol prices compared to oil prices.

http://www.caltex.com.au/pricing_pla.asp

FordFan86 · 21-05-2006, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djjase

So tell me then - how come the one on Today tonight can sell it for $0.15 / ltr cheaper and still make a profit ?

As my boss says.. "We're just a deli that sells fuel" 99% of our profit and most other petrol stations profit rely on purchases in the store to make money (cigarettes being the biggest money maker).
Why not drop the price of fuel dramatically and watch the people flood in?
You do that and you're not guaranteed that everyone will buy something.. probably the opposite with people just wanting their fuel and to get out for the next people..

Wokkas · 21-05-2006, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by au3 chaser

Inflation.

When my mum and dad got a house in Canberra in 1989, I think my dad was on about $20k thereabouts. So the house was equiv. to about 5 years pay. Now the same house is about $350000. Let's say I'm on $35k, the same house is worth 10 years of my pay... worse in other cities...

If that were the case, then petrol would have only gone up by less than 5c per litre this financial year. Inflation at the end of June is predicted to be roughly 3%.

Van D · 21-05-2006, 07:05 PM

I know supply and demand etc etc, but it is all a bit sillt really.

Even LPG.. Dad used to work at Mobil in the city and said they just considered LPG waste, and it only cost 1c or less. Now we're paying 50c + for it =/

Gilesie · 21-05-2006, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chich

Its a well known fact that money isn't made on petrol - the margin is made in the store when you buy a magazine, mars bar, ice creams etc. In the past petrol was sold at the franchise owners and then this loss was reimbursed by the oil companies and i imagine this still stands today.

Thats funny my wife works at a servo and every receipt that she has seen for fuel puchases is around the $1.17 cpl

djjase · 21-05-2006, 09:14 PM

If servo's relied on selling other things in their stores, they must be selling drugs. I sat in front of a popular servo and watched for an hour. Most people brought petrol and nothing else. With the price of petrol people aint buying those luxuries like magazines and mars bars etc or at least are cutting back on them. So I guess with that happening there will be a few servo's shutting down soon.....