Posted by I remember fuel being about 40p a gallon, or 8.8p a litre! This still sounds bonkers to me now. Interestingly, when we started selling fuel by the litre rather than the gallon, prices were hiked overnight because people just didn’t understand the new prices. There was rarely a difference of more than 4p a gallon between filling stations, and this became 4p a litre overnight. So effectively the difference became about 18p a gallon. This is still true to this day, and since we have the rather strange situation where people still refer to MPG or miles per gallon, rather than miles per litre or even kilometres per litre, most are unaware just how much they could save by shopping around for fuel. I don’t suggest driving miles to get cheaper fuel, but personally, I do fill up my car when passing places that have cheaper fuel.
On the subject of “cheap fuel”, this is an area where people think that they are getting a worse product in some way. Let me put you straight. if you go to a fuel depot belonging to the likes of Esso, you’ll find that on one day Tesco and Morrisons are filling their tankers there, and on the next day, they’ll be filling at Shell. They simply buy bulk fuel where it’s cheapest, and you should too because it’s the same fuel.
There is one little difference, and that is that some fuel is more expensive because it is different. It has special additives in it to increase its octane and therefore its potential power. Unless you drive a supercar, you’d be incredibly unlikely to notice any difference, although I’ve heard plenty of people argue the point. I worked on the injection system for the additives many years ago when Shell was the first to bring out “special” fuel. It was called Formula Shell and it was supposed to be amazing. In fact, it caused all sorts of problems and you can read about these here.
Another thing I often hear is that I should be boycotting a certain oil company for one reason or another. This is a pointless exercise because fuel is like any other commodity, it gets traded between suppliers and buyers across companies.
As an example, if you boycott your local Esso garage, they sell less fuel and that hurts the individual garage that is almost certainly operated by a tenant. You buy your fuel from Tesco instead, and they are very happy to take your cash, but they need to buy that fuel from somewhere. Esso has a temporary surplus so they sell it to Tesco. The end result is that Esso has sold exactly the same amount of fuel at the same price, just via different channels.
So, next time you think of boycotting a particular supplier, just remember that they all buy fuel from each other, and the only ones that get hurt are the individual filling stations, not the big oil companies.