This is just a short economic rundown meant to show how all the automobile drivers can have more fuel price control. Learning these bits can give us the proper financial strategy to help save the environment when an alternative fuel is finally developed.

Lets just start off by revealing the fact that almost all of the small gasoline companies have been bought up by a few giant ones. That basically means that the old time profit competition between the small ones has disappeared. That is easily observed by any of them truckers who haul gas around this country.

I hauled gas all over the southwestern states up until I had that seizure fifteen years ago. Unfortunately that six month long coma I survived made me stop trucking all together. I wasn’t even able to take the physical health test when my CDL license needed to be renewed.

Before that abrupt cut off in life I had been able to see how the gas prices varied from city to city and how the station owners seamed to compete.

Since I knew that one of the Chevron refineries was in southern Colorado just above Bloomfield New Mexico it wasn’t surprising that the price for it wasn’t too expensive in places up north like Denver. It’s just that way down south of there in Bosque Farms and Albuquerque that tended to be an expensive brand of gas.

While delivering gas all over town in Albuquerque it was easy to see how the stations along side the Interstate Freeway tended to be the most expensive in town. I’d always tell myself that was because none of them tourists had any choice as to where to get gas as they passed through. You could even see around town which brands of gas were the cheapest ones. Diamond Shamrock and another small company with a couple refineries in New Mexico would have price wars in order to try and make some kind of profit.

There was just one thing that held true in just about every town I made deliveries in. Them tiny convenience stores like Loves were out to attract costumers and charged less than several of the stations around town. The only drawback in buying gas from them was that no brand of gas was guaranteed to be there. Them stations would get any kind so the gas purchased could be just Diamond Shamrock or Phillips Sixty Six.

That last fact is very important because different types of gas give different amounts of fuel mileage. It’s been my experience through the 1980 thousand CC Sportster I own that Phillips Sixty Six gives a lot higher mileage than Diamond Shamrock. I try to fill my bike up with the getter brand no matter how short a trip I’m going to make. That’s one of the facts we all should know so them few giant gas companies can quit making us pay a lot for them kinds of gas that aren’t really worth buying.

I hope that if we would all just buy the gas that gives up the better mileage them greedy billionaires won’t have as much control over us. Their giant companies will no longer make so much profit. The probably will be forced to lower the price for any of that low fuel mileage gas because most of us will no longer be buying it. It might even force them to stop being so fiercely against alternative fuel. One of them might even look at bio-diesel as a new way to make another billion bucks. If us consumers are ever going to regain any economic power we need to start only buying some gas that gives us good fuel mileage as we either drive in town to work or go on our vacation.