Why gas strikes do not work?

Question

if you all would read this

www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas...

it tells why gas strikes do not work and you just hurt

the station owners who do not have any say how the gas prices

area

you end hurting them instead now do you really want

a hurt station owner?

you are!

Answer 1

voice, you don't understand how fuels distribution works.  If I'm working for A and all of B's customers suddenly start buying from me, I haven't forecasted enough production to cover sales.  Since production forecasts are submitted 3-4 months in advance, there's no way to make more.  My supply at the terminal is dropping rapidly and the next pipeline delivery won't get here in time.  What can I do?  My alternative is to have my exchange coordinators turn to the wholesale exchange and see if we can pick some up from another supplier who has surplus fuel.  

When we go to the exchange, we find that there is fuel available.  Lo and behold, B hasn't sold anywhere near forecasted volume for this month and has surplus available.  He's willing to trade us for surplus we have in another market, or allow us to outright purchase fuel from him.  Now we've got enough to meet the additional quantities being purchased by our new customers and B has still sold the fuel he forecasted for that market.  The only people hurt in this are B's station owners who have lost foot traffic and can't make the mortgage payment as well as payroll for the month.

Fortunately, since we're exchanging regularly, my driver are authorized to load at B's terminal racks and I spent the 20 grand or so to have an injector installed at B's terminal so I can load my product with my additive package directly at his rack.  As an example, in Chicago, we operate 2 terminals, but have loading privileges at 7 terminals.  We have to be prepared for any event which could cause difficulty in getting gasoline to your local station.  Wholesalers have even wider privileges.  They can typically load at any of 25+ racks, even hundreds of miles from their normal operations.  This allows them to take advantage of small price discrepancies in addition to ensuring a constant supply.

Gasoline demand is inelastic.  Switching from one brand to another does nothing for overall quantity demanded.  Driving less, switching to more energy efficient appliances and vehicles are two of the smartest and easiest ways to reduce demand.  That is the only way to reduce quantity demanded, which will boost supply and soften prices.  Oh yeah, and reduce international tensions, strengthen the dollar, discover more oil than we're consuming.  Those will help, too...

Answer 2

No, then they should join us and boycott with us...

A one or two day boycott will not do anything, if we boycott one oil company for 1 month, it will work because they will have to lower there prices to make room for the inventory coming in, Lets say company A is selling gas and company B is not, then company B will lower there price to beat company A price, then there are price wars between company A and B... Lets just say we try for June 1st for the boycott