Why buying gas in bulk won't save you money
8:03 p.m. Friday, July 18, 2008
It's a gas bill Robert Bradshaw has had to get used to.
"$103.23," he said of his bill on Friday.
It's enough to make you want to quit buying gas altogether.
"The average Joe Worker has to go ahead and supplement this cost," Bradshaw said. "It's ridiculous."
The "cheap gas" is more than $3.80 cents in the Capital City and people have come to Chris Walton and Capital City Oil looking to buy gasoline in bulk.
"People are just thinking that it's cheaper to come and buy bulk gasoline to buy a tank and get 300 or 400 gallons at a time," said Walton, a dispatcher for the company. "That's not necessarily the truth."
That's because when you buy gas in bulk you're not just paying for the gas, but the truck and the driver who come to deliver the gas to you. And unless you have a huge gas bill, it's just not worth it.
"Unless you had the money and the room to buy a 12,000 gallon tank, no I would stick with buying from your local station," Walton said.
The price is high, but buying in bulk would be a lot more expensive. And no matter the price, Walton's profit stays the same.
"We're the middlemen in it all," he said. "We're still making the same profit whether it's $4 a gallon or $2 a gallon."
So they pass the cost on to people like Bradshaw.
"I'm just a subcontractor," Bradshaw said. "I do new homes for a living and now I have to raise my prices just to supplement my costs for fuel."
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