Comments on: Don’t buy a gas station

By: badxmaru

badxmaru — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:39:24 +0000

well in anyway TW I applaud your courage and know you’ll get up from this and fight on to the next one.

from what I remember, it definitely is a volume business - you gotta own a certain # of stations in a certain area to make the volume breaks

gas prices will possibly drop
maybe offering other ancillary services might be a good equalizer - e.g. natural gas? ethanol?

this post was very informative, and i applaud your tenacity

By: taewoo

taewoo — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:51:33 +0000

Thanks Ray.
As long as gas is above 4 bucks, i don’t see how you can make ANY money from gas station unless

1) you have HUGE bulk volume discount with your credit card processor (i.e.. have multiple stations with huge sales volume, thus negotiation leverage)
2) gas price goes down to below 3 bucks (very unlikely)
3) have other income generators, like carwash, a huge mart with fast food, or better yet… a casino.

I don’t need a business to lose money. I can do that just fine by myself.

By: Ray M

Ray M — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:10:56 +0000

Great Story.. Sorry it ended up the way it did. I was looking to buy a station (also in Southern CA) for about a year and as time went on buying a gas station went from a WOW! this is a great idea to WTF was I thinking.