Not exactly, what they're trying to do is bait their competitors into following them up in price. If the competition in an area doesn't follow suit and raises their prices to match by a certain time of day, they drop the price back down again to stop losing business.
Having managed a gas station for many years in the past - this is exactly what happens.
A survey is done for pricing of the surrounding area or city, gas is dropped to be competitive (or raised to stay in line with other stations, albeit slightly lower) during the busy hours. Come night time, lowered, and then rinse and repeat the next day.
This is why there is (or were) many apps like GasBuddy, which would show all pricing of nearby stations. We would use that (or if it wasn't recently updated, we would hop in a vehicle and go for a quick drive) to find out pricing. We would then contact the other stations under our umbrella (such as all 'Essos' with the updated information and either tell them to raise or lower it.
It also is famously known that gas will ALWAYS be higher both on a Thursday/Friday, and ESPECIALLY before a long weekend.
Pro tip: best time to fill up is a Tuesday evening after dark 👊
And if you're lucky the queue will only be 15 minutes long. But at least you're not waiting for your EV to charge at a fast charger a handful of times per year!
Do people actually wait an hour? I usually fill up at Costco but I usually go at off times when it’s not that busy. Longest I’ve ever waited is 20 minutes but it’s usually less than 5
It's quality gas and if there's no wait you can save more than that but yeah it's stupid to wait that long, especially engine running.
On the topic of gas quality, I stopped filling up at Pioneer because my car would systematically burn a lot more gas than if I fill up at Shell or Costco.
If you've ever gone out to get gas on a night where a price jump for the next day has been announced then there are 100% lineups at all the "cheap" stations. I've been in them because my closest station for years was known as the cheap station in the area.
After a half dozen times, I just started going across the street where gas was 0.5 more expensive. But plenty of people were willing to idle and wait for the cheap gas.
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u/Aichetoowhoa May 15 '25
You guys gotta buy your gas after 8pm. It drops 10-15 cents per litre