Introducing “The Economics of Everyday Things”

A new podcast hosted by Zachary Crockett. In the first episode: Gas stations. When gas prices skyrocket, do station owners get a windfall? And where do their profits really come from?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner, and today is an exciting day here at Freakonomics Radio headquarters, because today is the day we introduce a new show that I think you will love. We all love it, and I will be shocked if you don't. But let us know one way or the other. Our email is [email protected]. This new show is called "The Economics of Everyday Things." It's hosted by Zachary Crockett, a journalist with a knack for looking at something we've all seen a million times and thinking, hmm, I wonder how that works. Like I said, I think you're going to love it. Please welcome Zachary Crockett and the economics of everyday things.

• 0:49Zachary Crockett?

  Us Americans, we just love our gasoline. We use 374 million gallons of gas every day. That's around 30 full tanks for every registered vehicle per year. Now, relative to other countries, gas is actually pretty cheap in the US. Considering the sheer amount we use, though, every extra penny counts. When gas gets more expensive, we all look for someone to blame: politicians, oil executives. But the easiest target is the person who has to contend with disgruntled customers face to face: the gas station owner.

• 1:36Zachary Crockett?

  When the price of oil skyrocketed last summer, people on the internet created all kinds of memes about how much station owners were making. One shows a picture of Scrooge McDuck skiing down a mountain of cash. It's titled "Gas Station Owners Right Now." But are gas station owners really swimming in cash?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  No. Can I yell that any louder? Not at all. It's definitely not what people think.

• 2:07Zachary Crockett?

  For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, gas stations. There are 145,000 gas stations in the US. A lot of them have signs displaying the logo of one of the big oil companies, but that doesn't mean the company owns the gas station. Eight out of 10 gas stations in the US are actually owned by independent operators. They pay oil companies for the right to use their branding and gas. Many of them came here from other countries, like Jitendra P. Sethi.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  I was born and raised in New Delhi, India. I came here 17-year-old, 1976, and two days after arrival, I was working at a Sonic Drive-In food joint in Jackson, Mississippi.

• 3:03Zachary Crockett?

  Sethi eventually made his way out to San Jose, California, where a friend from India offered to sell him a gas station with a convenience store. He didn't know much about the business, but he took a risk on it.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  October 10, 1980, I bought the store, and I never looked back. I named it Penny Saver, a convenience store with two fuel pumps. I bought it for $80,000. Wasn't easy, probably worked seven days a week, 14, 15 hours a day sometimes, and it was not the best location, but I got a taste of the blood and never stopped.

• 3:42Zachary Crockett?

  Since then, Sethi has owned more than 40 gas stations. He's made good money, but the gas itself is something of a footnote.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  You know, gas business is penny business. We don't count dollars. We count pennies per gallon.

• 4:01Zachary Crockett?

  How is that possible? Well, the stations are at the very end of a long, complex, and expensive supply chain.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  We get the majority of our oil from our own domestic production, primarily in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana as well.

• 4:16Zachary Crockett?

  That's Garrett Golding, a senior business economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  The oil company sells to the refiner. The refiner's going to sell it to a distributor. The distributor's going to sell it to the retail pump station or chain of stations.

• 4:31Zachary Crockett?

  Golding says that most of what we're paying at the pump covers that very first step of the process, pulling that raw, black stuff out of the ground in Texas or North Dakota.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Generally, between 50 and 60% of your cost of gasoline is that cost of crude oil.

• 4:49Zachary Crockett?

  These percentages change quite a bit based on geopolitics, international trade, and a bunch of other factors. But let's say in the current climate, you buy a $4 gallon of gas. About $2 of that is going to cover the cost of crude. It's another 70 cents or so to refine it, 40 cents to move it from the refinery to the gas station, 50 cents or so for federal, state, and local taxes. Altogether, you're looking at about $3.60 just to get it to the pump. When all's said and done, gas station owners make about 30 cents for every gallon of gas they sell on average. And that 30 cents has to cover a lot of overhead.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  You've got maintenance, you've got electric bill, you have repairs, you've got the rent you've got to pay, and you've got all kinds of liability, fire protection, slip and falls.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  So by the end of the day, they're averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 cents a gallon of profit.

• 5:49Zachary Crockett?

  On average, a gas station sells roughly 4,000 gallons of gas every day. At 7 cents per gallon, that's a daily profit of around $300. So why don't station owners charge more for gas? For starters, they have a lot of competition. Stations are often clustered together. And, well, the guy across the street doesn't always play nice.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  I lowered 10 cents and the guy competing with me lowered 20 cents. So I lowered 10 more cents. He goes another 20 cents and he was making no money. I said, okay, I'm not going to play this game. So went up 20 cents. He went up 10 cents. It happens all the time.

• 6:35Zachary Crockett?

  Do the station owners ever just walk across the street and say like, hey, man, let's just keep it at 4.15 a gallon today?

• 6:44Speaker 03

  You know, they're not supposed to, but many do. And some don't. Some hate each other and they compete like anything.

• 6:52Zachary Crockett?

  Station owners usually buy a few days' worth of gas at a time, which they store in underground tanks. Once they load up, their costs are locked in for the next 48 to 72 hours. But the price of wholesale gas changes every 24 hours. If your competitor buys in at a lower cost, he might be able to undercut you. So you have a choice to make. You can lower your prices and maybe lose money on every gallon of gas you sell. Or you can keep a little profit margin and watch your customers go across the street. Ultimately, gas station owners are even more exposed to market fluctuations than their customers are.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  You really don't have any leverage to negotiate. The price is set per day. The crude price and the refiners, they all set their prices.

• 7:46Zachary Crockett?

  Station owners tend to insulate their customers from the ups and downs of the oil market. When crude prices go up, station owners are slow to pass on the extra cost to us at the pump. But when prices finally fall, well, they don't pass along the savings right away either. A station owner like Setti might keep his prices high for a while to make up for the bad times.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  In the economics world, the energy nerds, we call this rockets and feathers, where the price of oil can go up like a rocket, but the price of gasoline comes down like a feather. This is a frustrating thing for consumers to witness. But one way that I try to explain this is generally consumers are not getting the full price run up as it is running up and they're paying for it on the way back down.

• 8:39Zachary Crockett?

  So if gas isn't a big moneymaker, how do gas stations stay in business? That's coming up.

• 8:48Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:20Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:52Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 10:24Zachary Crockett?

  Back to gas stations. Gasoline draws customers in. But for gas station owners, the core of the business isn't at the pump. It's inside the store.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  We are a gas station/convenience store. We also have a takeout restaurant inside. So we try to be a one-stop shop.

• 10:44Zachary Crockett?

  That's Kai Trimble Lee. She owns a BP gas station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And she says that the bulk of her income comes from selling food. What kind of food?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, the bad stuff, but that's good stuff. Pork chop sandwiches, to beef polishes, to wings, to catfish, to shrimp, po'boys, the corned beef sandwiches. We got some magic going on.

• 11:13Zachary Crockett?

  Trimble Lee operates more like a bodega than a gas station.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  We sell a little bit of everything. Milk, eggs, bread, we sell fruit. You go to the gas station, you get some gas, and you go get a water. That's the business model. You're definitely gonna see more profit in a convenience store and restaurant than I would do the gasoline.

• 11:33Zachary Crockett?

  At JP Setty's stations, the margins are three to four times greater inside than out at the pump.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  We always ran at about 33% gross profit inside the store. Your cigarettes are maybe 15%. Your beer runs 25%. Candies, 40, 45%. Coffee, 50%.

• 11:56Zachary Crockett?

  What are the highest grossing items for you?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  I would love to sell you ice bags all day long. Typical ice bag will sell you for $1.49. Probably cost us 49 cents.

• 12:07Zachary Crockett?

  That's pretty good.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  It's pretty darn good.

• 12:10Zachary Crockett?

  But when gas gets more expensive, that business model gets screwed up.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Many of these station owners, anytime we have a big price spike, they make less money as prices go up than they do when prices go down or when they are low.

• 12:27Zachary Crockett?

  Here's what happens when oil prices go up. Number one, that tight margin on gas gets squeezed even further. Number two, people buy less gas, meaning station owners are doing less volume. And number three, when people buy less gas, they're also buying less soda or bagged ice inside the store.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Now you're having to choose, do I want two candy bars or just one candy bar? Do you want an 18 pack of beer or six pack of beer?

• 12:57Zachary Crockett?

  Higher gas prices also mean more problems outside at the pumps. For starters, theft.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Most tanks are not locked because deliveries come at night. So you got these people, they have three, 400 gallon plastic tank in their truck, pickup truck. Two, three in the morning, pitch dark, they'll come with a hose, open your tank, and they will take away three, 400 gallon gas. So you could lose couple thousand dollar worth of gas in those two, three hours. It's been happening quite more often than ever before.

• 13:34Zachary Crockett?

  And those price wars between stations, well, they get worse too.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  They are really in the cat and mouse game with each other on who raises prices slowest. Because as the pump prices go up, consumers are going to go to the station that is three cents cheaper. It's not a great environment for those operators right now at all.

• 13:58Zachary Crockett?

  Rising fuel prices are not great for business. But beyond that, station owners are facing a bigger problem. One that represents an existential threat to their livelihood. Electric vehicles. Sure, today EVs only make up around 1% of all cars on the road. But nearly half of consumers say that they would consider buying one in the near future. For station owners, installing EV chargers involves ripping up pavement and laying down cables. And the cost can run upwards of $100,000. That's a lot of ice bags.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  The billion dollar question here for the service station owners is how aggressive do you get with investment in something that is going to take a few years to really have a broad customer base?

• 14:50Zachary Crockett?

  Some station owners are waiting to suss things out a bit. Others, like Kai Trimbley, plan to install electric chargers soon.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  I can tell you, we will have two coming in, I would say, within the next year. You know, you have to be realistic with what the future is in telling. So you better try to be a part of it.

• 15:14Zachary Crockett?

  For now, there's at least one silver lining for gas station owners as JP Setti discovers when his own car is running low.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  I usually go to my own store, pay my own gas.

• 15:26Zachary Crockett?

  That must be nice.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  At least I can make 30 cents a gallon.

• 15:31Zachary Crockett?

  For the economics of everyday things, I'm Zachary Crockett.

• 15:36Zachary Crockett?

  This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston with help from Greg Rippon, Emma Terrell, and Eleanor Osborne. Our executive team is Neil Karuth, Gabriel Roth, and Stephen Dubner.

• 15:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  And this is Stephen Dubner again. Big thanks to Zachary Crockett for taking us on this maiden voyage of the economics of everyday things. We will play another episode for you next week. And if you want to make sure you never miss an episode, go ahead and follow or subscribe in your podcast app to the economics of everyday things from Freakonomics Radio Network. Again, please let us know what you thought. Our email is [email protected]. In the subject line, write "everyday things." We will be back very soon with a regular episode of Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  You know, I don't have any gas station friends. I'm gonna have to go make some gas station friends. You're gonna motivate me to go find one?

• 16:45Speaker 05

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• 16:53Speaker 06

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• 17:32Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 18:16Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 18:34Speaker 06

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