Seventy-two cents

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor I live in Marion but I frequently go to West Memphis. And since I absolutely hate dealing with the “Intersection of Doom” where Highway 64 crosses under the I-55 overpass, I almost always take Highway 77, where the only real inconvenience is the occasional slow-moving train – not as slow as a slow-moving train on College Boulevard, which is always at a glacial pace, but that’s a whole other column for a different time.

Anyway, I happened to be heading down Highway 77 earlier today and as I passed by the Shamrock convenience store at the corner of Highway 77 and Midel Marconi Drive, I caught the price of gas on the sign there – $3.19 a gallon!

No, this wasn’t for the super-high-octane premium stuff, just your average run-of-the-mill regular unleaded. I didn’t even need gas and it still gave me sticker shock. Anyway, I rounded the big curve there … you know the one … and was happy to see that the Walmart gas station there was still selling gas at a much more reasonable $2.57 a gallon. I know Trump said he was going to lower gas prices (even though the president has nothing to do with gas prices) but the man’s not even in office and they’ve been dropping for a couple of weeks now.

I don’t know the black magic, voodoo Harry Potter formula they use to calculate the price of gas but as long as it keeps dropping, I’m fine with it. And as I made my way into West Memphis, I saw the gas stations there were all within a few cents of the Walmart price, ranging from $2.55 to $2.61 at the stations I passed. So clearly the folks at Shamrock are for whatever reason sticking it to the consumer quite a bit.

But why? I don’t get it. Now, I will go ahead and tell you that I am notoriously cheap when it comes to buying gas. I will definitely drive across town rather than go to the gas station a block from my house because I know it’s going to be a few (5 to 7) cents cheaper even factoring in the gas burned by the extra driving, and those 5 to 7 cents add up over time.

Which is why I was so aghast by the Shamrock station charging $3.19 a gallon when the place right around the corner (or curve, I guess) was selling it for 72 cents less. Now, I know 72 cents isn’t going to make or break your budget, but that’s 72 cents times however many gallons of gas you’re buying. If you’re filling up a 20-gallon gas tank, that’s more than $14.00 for a fill-up. And again, $14 isn’t a game-changing amount of money, but it’s not nothing. I would think that a low-income household could probably use an extra $14 a week. I mean, I can fix a pretty big pot of spaghetti for less than 14 bucks.

And that’s the thing. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, right behind that Shamrock station is a low-income neighborhood known colloquially as “The Dollhouses,” because the houses are all in a similar floor-plan, similar siding cookie-cutter 2- or maybe 3-bedroom style and the homes there are primarily filled with senior citizens or young couples just starting out or people drawing a check for one reason or another.

In other words, people on a budget who might not be buying but “10 bucks’ worth” at a time, so you might not even think about how much less gas you’re getting if you just think of getting enough gas to get to work or take the kids to school or whatever. The Shamrock also serves as a sort of de facto grocery store for those folks, many of whom don’t drive, so the other items there are marked up to “convenience store” levels. I’d have to get a bicycle and pedal to Walmart …

I, however, will run out of gas trying to get to another gas station before I pay that much of a markup. I mentioned $14 a fill-up. Figuring a tank a week, that’s nearly $60 a month, which is more than $700 a year. So, basically, it’s like having to make an extra car payment or mortgage payment a year. It’s getting close to Christmas time, so imagine if you had just put that $14 a week in a jar and had it now to spend for the holidays!

So, yeah, it’s “just” 70 cents more. Maybe they overcharge for gas so they can sell cheaper cigarettes and beer? Maybe they figure they can’t compete with Walmart so they just charge so much more to maximize their profits? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s probably taking advantage of low-income folks in one way or another.

But that’s just my (seventy) two cents’ worth…