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Bill Brasky

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Posts posted by Bill Brasky

  1. 8 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

    Twitter shows me a lot of tweets from GasBuddy. In a nutshell: stations lose money during rapid RBOB spikes and have to quickly jack up their prices to catch up. The drops occur slower b/c they need time to recoup their losses and turn a profit again.

    Or, in other words, "elevator up, stairs down."

     

     

    It really depends on where they are at on inventory when the prices rise and fall.   If you filled your diesel tanks to the rim and next day it goes up 80 cents per gallon in cost, you raise your price to stay competitive with the market, then turnover that inventory in a day or two, you are golden.   If you were empty and forced to buy some on the day when it rose 80 cents, then the next day it drops 50 cents per gallon you are screwed.   

  2. On 3/13/2022 at 12:20 PM, jimmyjazz said:

    Can someone explain the correlation between gasoline prices and oil prices, and how they can get disconnected?  I've seen a rule of thumb that a price change of $10/bbl translates to $0.25 at the pump, but sometimes I see significantly different gas prices for the same underlying oil price.

    For instance, WTI was roughly $75/bbl in October 2018 and October 2021, but EIA says the blended gasoline price at those points in time were $2.94/gal (2018) and $3.38/gal (2021).  That's more than a 10% price difference for the same underlying price of oil.  Is the price of gasoline backwards looking; i.e., I should compare October gas prices to (say) August oil prices to allow for processing time?  That doesn't seem consistent with what's going on now -- oil has shot up over the past few weeks, as has gasoline.

    While related there is no simple formula of oil price of x = street price of gas y.   Look at the RBOB markets to get a starting point of what the street price will be, then add in your state/federal taxes (38 cents if you live in Texas), freight (2 to 10 cents), and margin for the gas station itself and that will get you in the ballpark for the street price.   

    Last week was pretty wild.  Most gas stations had to rise their prices pretty rapidly to account for increase in prices on the RBOB market.   If you didn't raise your price to keep up with competition then the store's inventory would get depleted rapidly to the point of running out of fuel to sell.   You would then lose out on inside sales where they really make good margin.   Also for the smaller mom and pop type of places they would need to raise price to have cash on hand to pay for the next delivery of more expensive fuel.  

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  3. 58 minutes ago, Chopper said:

    It's been a long time since I took macroeconomics but when an industry is dominated by just 4 companies, and the cost of entry is high because it requires expensive P&E, the gov't regs make very little difference because the competition -- an oligopoly -- holds pricing power and could easily price any new entrant right out of the game. I'd argue, in fact, that gov't regulations which allowed 4 companies to merge and then dominate the market for meats, means we don't have enough regulation. When was The Jungle published - over 100 years ago? On the topic of FDA regs, not enough has changed in the meatpacking industry since then.  No meatpacker shivers in fear of the FDA inspector.

    We have the same problem - oligopolies which behave like monopolists - in the railroad and in the ports industries. They are bottlenecks and their behavior is destructive to capitalism.

    I wouldn't say that government regulations allowed mergers so that only 4 companies ruled the meat packing industry, more like government regulations forced them to merge.   And now the big 4 are reaping the benefits.   

    • Like 1
  4. I guess it belongs here since no more motorcycles run at Pikes Peak anymore, but the official entry list came out today.   Highlights for me are Rod Millen coming back with his 1000HP Tacoma, Mike Whiddett in a 1200 HP Mazda with a four rotor engine, and J.R Hildebrand entering a Dallara Indycar 

  5. 11 hours ago, midtown said:

    Any of your SWA lovers have any drink coupons that you aren't using?  I don't fly SWA much but wouldn't mind a few free drinks on the way to Belize next week.

     

    10 hours ago, CooterBrown said:


    Don’t get caught. Last time I went to Belize, the SWA flight attendant caught someone with alcohol they brought on right after boarding and went fucking off on her. I’d never seen anything like it. She told her she had 2 seconds to hand it over if she was dragging her ass off the plane and hand her over to the cops.

    and this is why the mask mandates on planes won't end for a while.   the union for these lazy fucks has too much power and if they started serving drinks then the sky waitresses will actually have to start doing work again.   they are the ultimate Karens on a power trip  

    • Like 3
  6. One the guys at work drives for Uber as a side hustle.   Said he was on the northside of Austin the other night and saw a massive HEB that was bigger than any grocery store he had seen in his life but the parking lot was empty so it wasn't open yet.   We had him show us the location on google maps and figured out he drove past the HEB center in Cedar Park.   Fucking moron.  

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  7. On 1/4/2022 at 10:03 AM, statsman said:

    I did not grow up in Waco, but graduated HS there before matriculating at UT. I figured out quickly that I needed to get out of there. My folks still live there. 
    Here is a top 10 list of Waco weirdness. They are not just a list of tragedies, although most are tragic. This is a compilation of bad things happening and civil society failing to respond in a normal or honest manner, making things…weird. In roughly chronological order- feel free to google for details

    1. The career and murder of “sort of journalist” William Cowper Brann. 
    2. The lynching of Jesse Washington 

    3. 1926 Baylor-TAMC football riot, killing an Aggie. 
    4. Incredibly successful and influential WHS football coach Paul Tyson relieved of duties due to suspicion of illicit relations with players. 
    5. 1982 Lake Waco murders, with a strong possibility that the killer(s) were never found and innocent (of that crime, at least) men were executed. 
    6. The1990 incident where two (married to other people) Waco news anchors went missing, only to be found in a clandestine tryst in New Mexico. 
    7. Branch Davidians

    8. Dave Bliss

    9. Art Briles

    10. Twin Peaks

    wow. Can any community top that, for weirdness? I listed ten items and didn’t even need to add Kenneth McDuff’s murder spree while a paroled student at TSTI. 
    Anyone want to argue that Waco isn’t weird?

    7. isn't Waco.   That would be like something happening in Pflugerville and attributing it to Austin 

     

    I'll add the complete cult-like obsession people have with the Fixer Upper people and how it somehow turned Waco into a tourist destination 

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