One of the last full-service gasoline stations in central Ohio shut down its pumps for good this week simply because there was no longer money in selling gasoline.
Broad & James Shell closed the gas island and convenience-store parts of the business on Wednesday, after 35 years as a Columbus mainstay, according to a report in the Columbus Dispatch.
"They did everything for you," Eddie Roquemore, who lives a few blocks away, told [image-nocss] the newspaper. "They're good people."
The co-owners, brothers Jim and Tim Shriner, made the decision last week. They will continue to operate the auto-repair and towing parts of the business.
"It's tough," said Jim Shriner, sitting in one of the two padded chairs of his garage's narrow waiting room. "I don't like telling people they don't have a job." About 10 of the station's 40 workers were laid off.
He said the station has been losing money on gas for some time. As an independent retailer, he has found that his retail-chain competitors are able to sell gas for less than his wholesale cost. He doesn't know how the competitors do it, but he knows he can't.
Meanwhile in York, Pa., the Hess station on South Queen Street looks like any other Hess outlet. However, as an independently owned franchise, the site has been struggling lately to keep up with falling gas prices, according to a report in the York Daily Record.
"People think it's like all the other Hesses," said Chris Stremmel, who works at the station, which is owned by his father.
However, the station has to charge more for a gallon of regular gasoline than its corporate-controlled counterparts, he told the newspaper.
On Dec. 23, Stremmel's station charged $1.69 for a gallon of regular gasoline, while a corporate-operated Hess station not far away charged $1.61.
This is how Stremmel explains the difference to customers, according to the report: Independently owned stations buy gasoline less frequently than their corporate counterparts, which makes them more subject to fluctuations in the market. Stremmel would place an order for 9,000 gallons of gasoline at a set price, then watch the market value drop before he even received the order.
"We can't sell gas for 10 cents under what we paid for it," Stremmel said. "We have to pay the bills."
Twenty minutes away in Glen Rock, Pa., Charlie Wetzel, owner of Wetzel's Market, told the newspaper his station is in a similar predicament, at times having to sell a gallon of regular gasoline for about 10 cents more than his competitors.
"The market jumps so much," Wetzel said. "I've seen it jump as much as 18 cents in one day. If you bought that day before it dropped, you ended up with high-priced gas."
And in Dallas, Pa., an independently operated Uni-Mart convenience store and gas station closed earlier this week, the latest business located along a busy commuter route to shut down, according to a report in the Times Leader. A Starbucks coffee shop in Shavertown closed earlier in the month, and the Mark II Family Restaurant in Dallas Township ended a 37-year run in October.
The Uni-Mart, which includes a Pennstar bank branch that will remain open, was built in the mid-1990s as an Orloski's Quik Mart, according to the newspaper report. Orloski's, which had grown to 43 stores after its founding in 1969, was sold to publicly-traded Uni-Mart Corp. in 2000 for $41 million. The chain operated a network of 283 company and dealer-operated stores when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, as previously reported in CSP Daily News.
When the Dallas, Pa., store opened, it was the first in the area to incorporate a car wash and bank office with convenience items and gas pumps.
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