Price of Gas

Cameron Hunt

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Hi Guys and Gals. I just got this in an email, and wanted to share with you all. But I dont have everyones email, so I will copy and paste it here. Let me know what you think.

This is an analogy - Worth reading and thinking about. (THIS IS GREAT!)




The Price of Eggs

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time.


One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs. Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same
thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen. This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says,"there must be something
we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day. The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks. At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free". The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time". "Now if you were to
drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying. Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we
will start buying by the dozen." Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg
farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need
eggs for quite a while.

And them chickens kept on laying. Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because
they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers starting buying by the dozen again. Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline

industry. What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up.
You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas, that leaves my tank a little under half full.
The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down.

Everyone should read this and send it on!




Certainly something to think about!
 
I like the philosophy, but see two catches...
First, oil money is BIG money, we could all stop buying gas for a year and they'd just count their billions while waiting us 'poor-folk' out.
Second, more customers (or the same customers three times as often) at the gas station means more employees to tend them; the stores will have to recoupe the cost of wages through higher prices... the same is true for the truck drivers that are waiting to unload, while increasing the cost of transportation.

The system is a cluster fu%* designed to keep the stautus quo. If you want to make a difference, cut down on your driving!
 
Only problem for me is that $10 in fuel (now at $3+/g) would only about top off the fuel filter in my diesel....I'd spend more time at the station then I would at home with my family :( Dropped in $75 last night and, nope, didn't even fill both tanks with it.......
 
If you buy $50 of gas once per week and now you start buying $25 of gas twice per week, how much gas are you saving?

Did you know that if every person in China used just 2 gallons of gas more in 2006 than they did in 2005 that world demand for gas would go up 2.6 BILLION gallons?

Did you know that you can just shut off the oil wells, they don't just keep producing causing a stockpile? Did you know that oil is a non-perishable commodity?

You do have some good points, and that is the US needs to start reducing demand for fuel, not because it is going to have this huge impact on prices, but we just won't buy as much.

Did you know that the "big oil" companies make about 7 cents per gallon of profit? So if we forced exxon to just break even it would only drop the price at the pump 7 cents. Did you know that taxes (fed/state/local) on fuel amounts to app. 50 cents per gallon? So whose gouging who?

Very few gas stations are owned by big oil, so if the local station raises their price 30 cents in one day, talk to the owner, not exxon.

Worldwide demand increases (china and other 3rd world countries), supply side manipulation by OPEC, the fact that most of the oil comes from unstable countries (middle east, nigeria, etc), lack of refinery capacity, higher pollution standards and lack of domestic oil production (think ANWR) are all coming together to push prices up. We are still significantly cheaper for fuel than Europe.

BTW, looked at a toyota prius today (hybrid car)...61 mpg. Thats how you cut your fuel bill!

Unfortunately, if the price of oil goes back down, we will not fix any of the problems, we won't drill for domestic oil, we won't explore shale oil refining, we won't expand refineries and there will be less effort spent on building more and better hybrid/alternative fuel cars. I don't like the high prices either but it will drive R&D into alternatives!
 
Very nice post ID Hunters.

I too am looking to buy a hybrid byt I can't stand the look of the Prius. Maybe a Honda???
 
2 things...

1. I changed my Comute from 40 mins to 2 mins recently.
2. I make enough money to buy gas at $5/gallon. Not that I want to pay it, But I'm still driving were I want to go, and therefore I'll pay for Gas whatever it goes up to.

Hybrids cost more then a regular gas car.. so what are you saving ?

a 24 gall tank @ $2/gall filled up 4 times a month is $192/month. Even if it goes up a BUCK, thats only an extra $96/month. Some people complaining that I know of has over $20,000 in credit card Debt paying $300+ intrest a month.

My point is.... I haven't had a Coke/pop in almost 2 weeks so you should be proud of me ;)
 
Moosie said:
My point is.... I haven't had a Coke/pop in almost 2 weeks so you should be proud of me ;)
I think your "proud tank" is overfilled already.:rolleyes: :D
 
LOL..... Do you mean how many an Hour ;)

Gas Sucks, but it's a Needed deal. Fortunately Nessecity (Someone help me out on that Spelling :D ) anyways.. Necessity it the Mother of Invention. If it gets too crazy something else will come along. If we run out, something else will come along. Bottom line is we need Fuel to get to places. We could stop buying gas, but in this day and Age what would you do. They have us by the Short and curly's.
 
Did Forest Gump come up with that plan to put the screws to Big Oil? About the only thing that plan will do is be a boon to the tow truck industry. Did you hear the morons in California have government funded tow truck drivers that drive around and give people a free gallon of gas for those that run out on the road? Now people there are running out on purpose just to get the free gallon of gas! Only in California. Just read today that a gallon of gas in London cost's $6.62. Could be worse.
 
I like what one of the South American countries did, don't remember if it is Brazil or who, but they started working on a sugar based fuel 2 decades ago. Now they are almost completely free of oil dependancy. Since they grow their own sugar cane they can tell the oil companies to pound sand.
 
Yeah Slim... It's Brazil... They run ethanol made from sugar... That is a real world solution, it would take years, but, it could work... Hybrids are a joke... What are you gonna haul with a hybrid? There needs to be some way to cheaply retrofit peoples existing vehicles and run both gas and ethanol... The crap about how the oil companies don't make any money is just that CRAP... If that were true they wouldn't be making record profits on this deal, their profits would remain the same no matter what it cost them... It sucks, and there is not much you can do about it, but it is fun to bitch about...
 
John the reason there profits are going up is because we are using more and more oil everyday.

Just for the sake of arguement look at it this way.

profit .07

in 2000 they sold 1,000,000 gals per day profit=70,000
in 2005 they sold 10,000,000 gals per day profit=700,000

we have more people buying more gas which equals more profit. the more we buy the more profit they make.

just because the price at the pumps goes up doesnt necc. mean that the oil companies are making more profit.

I have no idea what profit margin the oil companies are making nor do I really care. I need the gas and if an extra 50 bucks a week is going to break me then I shouldnt be doing what I am doing now.
 
Everytime we have a spike at the pump, go to any website or open an e-mail and these same variations of the same old fixes are discussed. Yes, I work and make my living in the OIl and Gas Industry, but I think the prices we are having now will promote conservation and new alternate fuels, all of this is good for my children and my grandchildren. I don't even worry about the price of a gallon of gas, if I need it, so be it. What you have to ask yourself is "What is the COST, if we do nothing". We all know there is no one man worth $400 million for running a company, Unless it's me!:D John
 
I have to pay taxes too... I don't like it, but I have no choice... Same thing with gas I need it, So I pay whatever it costs... That don't mean I can't be pissed about how much it is... I love how all you guys act like because someone can afford it, means you shouldn't bitch about it... I thought thats what these forums are for... Complaining about stuff you can't change... DELW, the oil companies are doing just fine, you have to remember that those record profits reflect only what they can't hide... Just like any other huge corporation...Imagine what they spend on lobbyists to keep other fuels off the market... Now do they deserve it? Probably... Who's fault is it that we have no new refineries in what 30 years... Who won't let them drill in ANWAR? Who won't let them check out shale drilling? The government... Who else... The greenies don't have a very long rope, but they throw a wide loop...
 
I heard today that Chevron made 4 billion dollars profit...on 54 billion dollars of revenue. They are not making even 10% profit on gross revenue. I'm sure their ROI is not that great.


On Memorial Day weekend, I will be towing my toy hauler filled with ATVS, driving my V-10 4-door Ford F-350. It will take 3 tanks of gas, round trip, plus whatever the toys drink up. The price of gas is not going to stop me from going....
 
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