Letter of the Day: Sheetz is good for motorists, bad for its small competitors

Sheetz gas station is welcomed in Statesville, as any gas station selling cheap gas would be. For working people with a limited budget, cheaper is better.

It gets old hearing the cost of gasoline being compared to milk and orange juice, as people say that gas is cheap compared to milk. I’m glad I don’t have to buy 25 gallons of milk every week. In this premise a gas retailer like Sheetz is welcome.

Sheetz is reminiscent of Wal-Mart. A lot of people don’t understand that just because the gas station has a BP sign out front that it is independently owned. These small business owners are required by the oil companies that own the pumps, tanks, signage and the gas that is in the ground to lay out enormous amounts of cash and lines of credit to be able to sell gas. In return, the oil companies call the gas stations, sometimes twice a day, and change the gas prices.

To be competitive, the oil company will let the owner lower their price to compete, but the owner is working on commission from the oil company. So if the oil company is demanding $3 a gallon, and the owner is selling for $2.85, the oil company will bill the gas station owner for the 15-cent- per-gallon loss next week. The gas station owner is also responsible for any credit card fees.

These owners make their money on the things that they sell inside the store, not on the gas. I worked at a gas station, and I personally saw a gas station pump 7,000 gallons of gas in one week and the owner still had to pay the oil company. He made no money on 7,000 gallons of gas. The fat cats are the executives who have paid off politicians in Washington and whose companies are posting record-breaking profits, while Americans are being destroyed at the gas pumps.

Owning a gas station used to be profitable, but now these independent owners are just trying to weather the storm. There is no “savings account” that they have built up from charging high gas prices that they can dip into because Sheetz has set up shop.

And, before it’s all over, they’ll be lucky to get out with the shirts on their back.

Marcus Troutman
Troutman