I worked at Costco while in college many years ago and I got to see how the gas price was set for my specific warehouse.
Someone would drive out to a few neighboring gas stations, record prices, and set ours ~10 cents lower.
That’s it. That’s how the price was set.
Aside, working there was very good for a college job and I was treated very respectfully for the summers I was there.
Aboutplants 4 hours ago [-]
I’m betting stores are given a floor price/cost and are given the flexibility to raise above that up to 10 cents cheaper than the nearest competitors in the specific area. All stores do not have the same ability/flexibility
hiitsmyaccount 2 hours ago [-]
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culi 7 hours ago [-]
GasBuddy is great for this. You can see average gas prices across all gas stations for a certain region (or nation-wide).
GasBuddy is great, no doubt! I was well familiar with them before working on the site. The issue is that their data is user reported and not directly reported from Costco's warehouse numbers - so there were a few times that the price was vastly different from what was at the pump.
art222 6 hours ago [-]
The user-reported vs source-reported thing is bigger than people think. I work with car listing prices and the gap between what people say something costs and what the source actually shows is basically the whole reason my product works. Pulling from the warehouse numbers is the right call even if the coverage is smaller.
culi 3 hours ago [-]
It's an extensive dataset (Gasbuddy is one of the most used apps in the US) and they have sophisticated techniques to prevent fake/incorrect prices. I've used it for years and have only come across incorrect prices twice.
Costco prices are great but it should not be used to calculate things like "average national gas prices". You will inevitably over-represent the types of places where Costcos are more likely to be built.
walrus01 2 hours ago [-]
I don't see any need to 'track' costco gas prices in my area, because at least in western washington state, my local costco is always the least expensive option for regular unleaded. My choice of whether I go there to fill up is simply if it happens to be on the way to/from somewhere else I'm going or is not an unreasonable detour. Or I need to do some other costco shopping. Or it's late at night and the costco is closed, so I have to go to a 24x7 place like an ARCO.
The gas price savings easily pays for the annnual standard costco membership.
0cf8612b2e1e 1 days ago [-]
Costco gas is famously a loss leader, typically running 15 to 20 cents below surrounding stations.
Is this true? I always assumed that Costco just had better deals/longer horizon commitments so it could undercut local stations. Maybe they even own a refinery just to maintain the best margin.
I love that podcast and that episode, but I think they got a little Costco fever.
The hot dogs, gas, and chicken are almost certainly loss leaders.
In my store they are selling a case of Coke $4 under everyone, which is certainly not making 11%.
Which is fine by me, it’s my favorite store by far.
phil21 16 minutes ago [-]
Weird. Costco is never the cheapest price for Coke in my area. Or the previous state I lived in. At least if you bought during sales at competing Supermarkets.
Where they win my Diet Coke business is that they are consistently a "good deal" - never the cheapest, but never the most expensive. And I don't need to wait for a sale to stock up.
I still buy soda from the local grocery stores when I happen by a deal when shopping for other things. But I don't go out of my way. The specials are usually much better than Costco though. By 25% or more per can.
Honestly this goes for most things I buy at Costco. Even in bulk, their per-unit costs beat the standard pricing at competitors - but never the sale prices. It just removes mental overhead. And the bulk prices are always better at a restaurant supply store. Where Costco wins in this area is curation so I can reduce mental load, but then again Costco does the bullshit where they stock something for 6mo out of the year and you spend an extra 20 minutes searching the store for it the next time you need it only realizing they stopped selling it. Then it appears randomly a month later.
They are a decent middle ground for me. I can buy 10lbs of chicken breast of decent quality for $2.99/lb I can toss directly into the freezer pre-packaged into meal-sized portions. Or I can buy 40lb boxes of bulk chicken breast for $1.39/lb from the supply store and spend a couple hours vacuum packaging it myself.
I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the place! I see Costco as the upper middle class consumerism version of nerd sniping.
ButlerianJihad 7 hours ago [-]
It would be illogical to make gasoline a "loss leader" because, surely, there are people who visit the gas station and then jet out of there without going anywhere else. A loss leader item is something that gets people in the door, puts their butt in a seat, and gets them to make a transaction that will include piling on other stuff. So if your Jumbo Jack is a loss leader, then you can charge $2.00 for sodas and $3.00 for French fries, and the same customer will probably also grab a $6 Oreo shake.
Someone who's filling up for gas may or may not go inside the Costco store proper. But the gasoline isn't going to influence their buying habits. If they "just need gas" that's all they'll get.
Conversely, I cannot see how a $1.50 hot dog is doing anything but losing money. It's a classic candidate for loss leader.
cj 5 hours ago [-]
In rural America, getting someone into the parking lot isn’t much different than in the front door when the next box store is 10-20+ minutes away.
It makes less sense in the suburbs.
Spooky23 1 hours ago [-]
The average Costco ticket is $150 out the door. The retail margin is 11%, or $16.50.
Say you fill the car with 15 gallons, and they lose $0.25/gallon. That’s $3.75. If 1/3 of the gas station customers go in the store, they’re making $5.50 from retail, less the gas losses they net $1.75.
They make money, deny their competition business, and lock you mentally into saving money on gas and renewing that membership. That membership is half their operating income.
I’m probably being pessimistic. One thing with Costco is they are incredibly efficient, so I’m sure they’ve baked out cost and overhead. You can see stuff like how they provide the minimum number of garbage cans.
shrubble 22 hours ago [-]
They are selling 10000 gallons a day at some locations, so I find it hard to believe.
More like they don’t have a need to make a profit and they run the station in a barebones manner on real estate that they get as part of the larger site. So it would be a loss leader for anyone else.
ashley95 2 hours ago [-]
If they lose 10c/gal, it still sounds like an incredibly small amount in the grand scheme of things and like a great loss leader?
hiitsmyaccount 2 hours ago [-]
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mikestew 7 hours ago [-]
During what I seem to recall was an earnings call about ten years ago, it was stated that Costco doesn't do loss-leaders. What they more likely do is sell the gas close to cost.
loco5niner 5 hours ago [-]
Their rotisserie chicken is certainly a loss leader, even if they don't call it that.
rpaik 4 hours ago [-]
Same thing with hotdog combo at $1.50. The price hasn't changed in 40+ years.
When you have a bunch of stores you do sign distribution deals with a nationwide distributor. If you buy enough fuel you might even be able to sign with an oil company that has refining capacity or their own distribution arm.
So Costco is definitely not paying the same price as your local convenience store. But they aren't getting a 35% discount either.
As many others have noted: Costco does not do loss-leaders. They're likely selling at cost or a very small profit above cost.
When we bought a house in 2021 I had 9.6kW of solar installed (and 20kWh of battery) and bought our first electric car. Since replaced it and have two electric cars now. At times like this I'm thankful for that. I make my own driving energy on my roof, covering over 80% of all driving and home electric usage.
bluGill 4 hours ago [-]
Nobody is signing a national contract for gasoline. It all comes from the local refinery, or in some cases a pipeline to a slightly more distant refinery. The final shipping is by truck and it's almost never the case that you can find a different place that you could drive a truck to that's cost effective. Shipping guests. A few more miles by truck, it's only a few dollars different, and so it doesn't cost much difference per gallon. However, when we're talking 100 miles, now you're talking about significantly more money and that shows up in the pump price. Worse, even if you are willing to pay the price, every state has different specific rules for gasoline and so there is a very high odds that only your local refinery can make the correct gasoline for your local area.
What national chains can do is specify the additive that the refiner adds. Anyone other than a national chain doesn't have enough profit to be worth trying to build their own additive package and takes the standard additives the refinery has, which are almost always a good package anyway.
edot 3 hours ago [-]
This is mostly wrong, sorry. Big chains absolutely do sign national or huge regional supply agreements for gasoline, e.g. Pilot/Flying J, Buc-ee’s, Sheetz, Costco, Sam’s Club, Speedway, etc.
You have two main errors: 1) conflating refineries with terminals 2) forgetting that fuel is a fungible financial product.
There are terminals all over the country, within trucking distance of the stations they serve. Those terminals can be supplied by a nearby refinery, yes, but also one or more distant refineries connected to a pipeline or via ship, train, or barge. There is an entire swath of the energy market called "midstream" that handles this.
Once a refined fuel gets into a terminal, its refinery of origin stops really mattering for contract purposes because of swaps. Exxon can supply gasoline in one market while Marathon supplies an economically equivalent amount somewhere else. Nobody is moving “Exxon molecules”. I mean, it literally all goes into the same tank if it's the same product. They (the terminal) just keep track of who supplied how much. The detergent package is also mixed in at the terminal loading rack, along with ethanol in the case of gas, not at the refinery.
Also, very few states actually have specific rules. California is the only real pain in the butt. You might be thinking of summer vs. winter blends, where the refiners adjust the vapor pressure to reduce emission in the summer and to increase ease of engine starting in the winter. This is something every refinery can and easily does.
giardini 4 hours ago [-]
Do we know how Costco's "additive package" rates relative to other providers (e.g., Shell's) additive packages?
Currently I buy Shell gas b/c I trust that it's good for my car's engine. Can I trust that Costco's gas is as good as Shell's?
qmr 3 hours ago [-]
You should be looking for "top tier" gas, which Costco sells.
SoftTalker 29 minutes ago [-]
What is "top tier" gas and how do you know who sells it?
phil21 3 minutes ago [-]
There is a logo on the pump. It's a standard that is vetted by an industry standards body.
Correct. Beyond that, doesn't matter. Go to where the fuel is the freshest (hasn't collected water, sat in a rusty tank for a long time, etc.). So, also probably Costco.
r58lf 4 hours ago [-]
weird fact. there's no refineries in florida. All the gasoline in south florida comes in via ship/barge.
all2 4 hours ago [-]
It's not true where I live. Costco is on average 5-10c more expensive than the cheaper places near me.
OptionOfT 3 hours ago [-]
Those places, are they top tier?
teruakohatu 17 hours ago [-]
Selling below the price of surrounding stations doesn’t mean they are losing money on the fuel.
Costco has a single store in my country and it’s butter that they sell cheaply to get people in the door. But I doubt they are losing money on it.
wyre 23 hours ago [-]
It makes sense. The ~$10 someone saves pumping at Costco is easily made up in the >$100 shopping trip they are making, or compared to lifetime spend.
bryanlarsen 9 hours ago [-]
No it doesn't. Costco has a gross profit margin of 11% and a net profit margin of 3%. Losing $10 to make $3 isn't viable.
basch 9 hours ago [-]
Costco isnt losing $10. They can sell gas at cost to run a gas station if they want to. They break even and get people there instead of a normal gas station.
xp84 7 hours ago [-]
> "a Global Fuel Crisis"
Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05.
A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis."
I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda.
Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?
tantalor 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what you want. There is a global fuel crisis. Wikipedia calls it a "worldwide fuel crisis". Is this in dispute?
It's just an odd choice on a page that's only about USA fuel prices. I wouldn't describe a 26% increase in any price as a ____ crisis. RAM and storage prices, now that's a crisis.
I believe OP's earnest statement that he's not trying to be political. I just think that propagandizing - if that was the motivation - would be dishonest by most definitions:
If one were just trying to boost Dems in the midterms by the classic "gas prices high -> loss for party in control" method, but they were saying "Inflation isn't that bad and gas prices are fine" during the 76% gas price spike in 2022, that's extreme bad faith.
And if one is implying "Fuel prices are higher now, therefore conflict with Iran is bad" I'd argue that's a shitty, cowardly, and selfish metric to base policy decisions on. Surely some battles are worth fighting because an enemy's behavior is too intolerable to allow, and gas prices being temporarily high is annoying, but not reason to capitulate.
pibaker 4 hours ago [-]
26% increase on something that is priced into the price of everything else is huge. In comparison the RAM price surge is a big deal in the consumer market but not nearly as bad as the chip shortages a few years back for industrial use. Fuel consumption is not really elastic either. Most people don't really need a new PC, but if you can't afford gas you will end up jobless real quick.
It can also get a lot worse very quickly when countries' strategic reserves run dry.
lafond 7 hours ago [-]
Hi! Absolutely zero political agenda here, just someone wanting to track the price of fuel.
Just want to clear that up that the jargon is selected specifically from a general understanding and not one from a political skew!
I also wasn't tracking fuel prices back in 2022, otherwise I probably would have included similar dialog given the nature of what caused the prices to rise.
gbear605 1 hours ago [-]
At the gas stations near me, at the start of 2025, I could get a gallon of gas for around $1.85. The stations near me are now up to around $4.30, a 250% increase. I don't know if I'd quite call it a crisis, but certainly it's a major shock.
I think this is the only one in US without a warehouse.
The prices are at least $0.40 cheaper than nearby gas stations.
woeirua 2 hours ago [-]
It'd be way better if the clusters showed the average price for all the stations underneath each cluster. Then you could get a sense of prices nationally immediately.
phainopepla2 7 hours ago [-]
It's crazy to me that gas in Hawaii, 3k miles out into the Pacific, is cheaper than most of California.
lotsofpulp 5 hours ago [-]
It is not crazy if you know that gas prices include taxes that can greatly vary by jurisdiction. The price at the pump may have little to do with cost of procuring it.
jerlam 5 hours ago [-]
California also has its own special gas that no one else uses, and cannot produce or refine it domestically to meet its own demand.
OptionOfT 3 hours ago [-]
Sadly 2 parts of Arizona use CA gas.
This means a couple of things: those places don't have 93, and the mileage you get out of a gallon is less.
I wish the government would ban 2 stroke engines (like leaf-blowers), which would have a much larger effect on air quality, vs using CA's oxygenated gas.
bluGill 4 hours ago [-]
Every state has their own gas. Well, you might find the same gas in, say, North Dakota and Minnesota or something, but those are right next to each other and have very similar environment situations. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if Minneapolis, and western Minnesota had different rules for environmental reasons.
Arubis 4 hours ago [-]
Taxes.
nomel 2 hours ago [-]
Not only taxes, but a specific California blend CARBOB, with 17% of the refineries that made it shutting down [1], causing a big reversal in policy perspectives to pro oil to slow down refineries from leaving [2], and the need to import, by sea, 20% from participating refineries in Asia [3] and 40% from Bahamas [4].
California being on the path to high prices this year was all over the news last year [5], but nobody seems to remember that, instead blaming it all on the Iran conflict.
I drove from Fargo to Port Angeles recently and hit up Costco for gas as much as possible. Should have written reviews of the Costcos along I94/I90. Billings was the best.
Probably a good index for predicting how midterms might go
1970-01-01 7 hours ago [-]
Tracking Costco gas doesn't make much sense as Costco doesn't make money on gas. They use it as a loss-leader for memberships.
ssl-3 7 hours ago [-]
Watching prices makes sense.
People spend money on gas, and sometimes one Costco has cheaper gas than another does.
The two Costcos that are nearest to me are listed at $3.65 and $3.79 right now. They're ~25 minutes apart. I think it would be fair to say that there's thousands of people living in-between where the difference in driving distance is irrelevant.
But if they decide that buying gas is a thing they're going to do today, and they can quickly compare the prices beforehand, then: They can use that data to help make an informed decision.
A 14-cent price delta isn't much, but if 11 gallons are purchased then it's enough to cover the price of a Costco hot dog and Coke (with refill). Not bad at all.
---
Additionally: While Costco seemingly doesn't make (much) money on gas, that doesn't mean that they're always cheaper.
Suppose I were making a Costco trip today and I also need to buy gas. I'd be heading to the Costco that has gas for $3.65 because that one is much closer for me.
But I can get gas for $3.62 right now at the station down the block from my house. There's no line there (there's never a line there), there's no membership proof to futz around with, and it's super easy to get in and out of.
Since I have enough easy information to make an informed decision, then: I can tell that the smart move is to plan on skipping whatever line may be present at Costco's gas station and just buy gas down the block. This will save me both time and money.
But tomorrow? Who knows. The situation may be different, so I may make a different decision.
1970-01-01 7 hours ago [-]
Watching gas prices makes sense. Watching Costco gas prices does not. Their gas is not sold without the membership factor attached. You're selecting for an additional variable of nearby Costco members when you choose to track Costco gas prices. If Costco memberships decline, prices need to slowly rise. If Costco memberships rise, their gas prices can go lower.
lafond 7 hours ago [-]
Exactly the mentality I had while building the site
quickthrowman 7 hours ago [-]
I just fill up when I’m low on gas at the nearest gas station. It’s not worth my time to save $1.50 a fill up when I fill up ~50 times a year, that’s only $75.
Spending any amount of time to save 20.5 cents per day is not worth it to me.
ssl-3 6 hours ago [-]
In my travels, the delta is often much greater than ~15 cents. Today is an unusually-consistent day in this market area.
I'd love say that keeping an eye on gas prices and trying to time the market to buy on the right day are things that make poor use of my time. That sounds very nice.
I don't have the financial means to turn a blind eye to these kinds of costs, though. Things are rough over here.
za3faran 6 hours ago [-]
What is more important that those $75 is whether or not the gas offered at the other station is Top Tier grade. Costco always is as far as I can tell. (I am not affiliated with Costco in any way shape or form)
I disagree. The prices still move with the price of oil. Their margins are just lower.
1970-01-01 7 hours ago [-]
The prices move on dozens of other factors, most of which include the word "supply" however some do not. Using Costco as an example will add "membership retention factor" into the mix of factors for price. Better to track all the Sunoco or BP or Mobil stations directly.
1 days ago [-]
jmpman 1 days ago [-]
I started screenshotting my local Costco warehouse gas prices weekly since the week prior to Trump's inauguration, mostly so my Trump supporting brother inlaw couldn't just spew his Fox brainwashing on me without me hitting back with this data.
hydrogen7800 1 days ago [-]
I've been tracking every fuel purchase I've made for 12 years now across 5 or 6 different cars. Not sure what I'll ever do with that information, but I suppose it may come in handy for a political argument.
Waterluvian 1 days ago [-]
I’d be amazed if it actually changed anything with him.
jmpman 1 days ago [-]
Oh it won't, doesn't mean I'm not planning to rub it in his face.
jerlam 1 days ago [-]
It's too bad there's no API to find the current wait time at the Costco gas station. I'm not going to spend an extra hour of my day to save $5.
BeetleB 7 hours ago [-]
There was a blog post around 10 years ago where someone did the math and found the extra wait wasn't worth the savings if you value your time.
For me, locally, there's a grocery store chain that also has gas stations. If you are a member (which is free), you get a discounted rate on gas - usually only 3-5 cents more per gallon than Costco. And if you do enough groceries in a 3 month period, you occasionally get an additional 10-20 cents off your next filling, which makes it cheaper than Costco.
They're also open a lot more hours than Costco gas. And their lines are shorter.
I don't see the point of going to Costco to get gas.
kyleee 4 hours ago [-]
Costco seems to be a rare responsible organization, treat people decently, don’t gouge customers (they aim for a pretty standard not too high margin), etc. So I know that is definitely a factor for some in terms of choosing Costco as much as possible
BeetleB 4 hours ago [-]
Oh, I'm happy to do my shopping there. Just not gas and tires.
lafond 1 days ago [-]
If only they exposed this data!! Would have been so fun adding the display to the site
plandis 7 hours ago [-]
Does it routinely take an hour to get gas at Costco near you?
Even when the lines are at capacity the Costco I go to (north of Seattle in Shoreline), I never wait more than like five minutes.
1 days ago [-]
dominotw 1 days ago [-]
i go befoe costoco opens at 7am . they have different timings.
caminante 1 days ago [-]
Or don't go at 9AM with the Executive rush. Wait 30m.
phil21 23 hours ago [-]
Doesn’t matter at all for my local Costco. It’s busy open to close with very little variance.
The only times I’ve seen it relatively empty were during bad storms.
That said, it’s not an hour wait. Around 20 minutes is average, but I rarely fill up there since I value my time much more than that.
jerlam 22 hours ago [-]
I don't live at Costco so it's going to be 30 minutes just back and forth. My Costco does have quieter times, but then I have to plan around it. It never made the slightest bit of sense to make a separate trip for $5.
Sohcahtoa82 1 days ago [-]
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ButlerianJihad 1 days ago [-]
Just wait until you have an EV! Then you will get to wait in line for an outlet, and then wait while the electrons trickle into your tank! Good times.
jerlam 22 hours ago [-]
There's no line in my garage.
Also most of the public chargers are networked, so you know when they are busy.
powerbroker 4 hours ago [-]
90% of my EV sessions are at home, at a personal time commitment of 5 seconds to open the charging hatch and plug-in. Maybe 5% of my EV charges take 30 minutes while I'm enjoying a meal or ... wasting time waiting in the car for it to complete at a fast 200 kW charge rate.
1970-01-01 7 hours ago [-]
Let's nevermind this nonsense about waiting in lines.. I want to know more about what is happening to electrons after they trickle into your tank. Where do they end up when you go for a drive? Are we pumping them back into the air?
Rendered at 02:54:31 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Someone would drive out to a few neighboring gas stations, record prices, and set ours ~10 cents lower.
That’s it. That’s how the price was set.
Aside, working there was very good for a college job and I was treated very respectfully for the summers I was there.
https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts
The data goes back even over 25 years if you play around with the query params (it started in June of 2000). E.g.
https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&...
Costco prices are great but it should not be used to calculate things like "average national gas prices". You will inevitably over-represent the types of places where Costcos are more likely to be built.
The gas price savings easily pays for the annnual standard costco membership.
The hot dogs, gas, and chicken are almost certainly loss leaders.
In my store they are selling a case of Coke $4 under everyone, which is certainly not making 11%.
Which is fine by me, it’s my favorite store by far.
Where they win my Diet Coke business is that they are consistently a "good deal" - never the cheapest, but never the most expensive. And I don't need to wait for a sale to stock up.
I still buy soda from the local grocery stores when I happen by a deal when shopping for other things. But I don't go out of my way. The specials are usually much better than Costco though. By 25% or more per can.
Honestly this goes for most things I buy at Costco. Even in bulk, their per-unit costs beat the standard pricing at competitors - but never the sale prices. It just removes mental overhead. And the bulk prices are always better at a restaurant supply store. Where Costco wins in this area is curation so I can reduce mental load, but then again Costco does the bullshit where they stock something for 6mo out of the year and you spend an extra 20 minutes searching the store for it the next time you need it only realizing they stopped selling it. Then it appears randomly a month later.
They are a decent middle ground for me. I can buy 10lbs of chicken breast of decent quality for $2.99/lb I can toss directly into the freezer pre-packaged into meal-sized portions. Or I can buy 40lb boxes of bulk chicken breast for $1.39/lb from the supply store and spend a couple hours vacuum packaging it myself.
I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the place! I see Costco as the upper middle class consumerism version of nerd sniping.
Someone who's filling up for gas may or may not go inside the Costco store proper. But the gasoline isn't going to influence their buying habits. If they "just need gas" that's all they'll get.
Conversely, I cannot see how a $1.50 hot dog is doing anything but losing money. It's a classic candidate for loss leader.
It makes less sense in the suburbs.
Say you fill the car with 15 gallons, and they lose $0.25/gallon. That’s $3.75. If 1/3 of the gas station customers go in the store, they’re making $5.50 from retail, less the gas losses they net $1.75.
They make money, deny their competition business, and lock you mentally into saving money on gas and renewing that membership. That membership is half their operating income.
I’m probably being pessimistic. One thing with Costco is they are incredibly efficient, so I’m sure they’ve baked out cost and overhead. You can see stuff like how they provide the minimum number of garbage cans.
More like they don’t have a need to make a profit and they run the station in a barebones manner on real estate that they get as part of the larger site. So it would be a loss leader for anyone else.
Here's a good article: https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/how-costco-turns-loss-lea...
So Costco is definitely not paying the same price as your local convenience store. But they aren't getting a 35% discount either.
As many others have noted: Costco does not do loss-leaders. They're likely selling at cost or a very small profit above cost.
When we bought a house in 2021 I had 9.6kW of solar installed (and 20kWh of battery) and bought our first electric car. Since replaced it and have two electric cars now. At times like this I'm thankful for that. I make my own driving energy on my roof, covering over 80% of all driving and home electric usage.
What national chains can do is specify the additive that the refiner adds. Anyone other than a national chain doesn't have enough profit to be worth trying to build their own additive package and takes the standard additives the refinery has, which are almost always a good package anyway.
You have two main errors: 1) conflating refineries with terminals 2) forgetting that fuel is a fungible financial product.
There are terminals all over the country, within trucking distance of the stations they serve. Those terminals can be supplied by a nearby refinery, yes, but also one or more distant refineries connected to a pipeline or via ship, train, or barge. There is an entire swath of the energy market called "midstream" that handles this.
Once a refined fuel gets into a terminal, its refinery of origin stops really mattering for contract purposes because of swaps. Exxon can supply gasoline in one market while Marathon supplies an economically equivalent amount somewhere else. Nobody is moving “Exxon molecules”. I mean, it literally all goes into the same tank if it's the same product. They (the terminal) just keep track of who supplied how much. The detergent package is also mixed in at the terminal loading rack, along with ethanol in the case of gas, not at the refinery.
Also, very few states actually have specific rules. California is the only real pain in the butt. You might be thinking of summer vs. winter blends, where the refiners adjust the vapor pressure to reduce emission in the summer and to increase ease of engine starting in the winter. This is something every refinery can and easily does.
Currently I buy Shell gas b/c I trust that it's good for my car's engine. Can I trust that Costco's gas is as good as Shell's?
https://www.toptiergas.com/
Costco has a single store in my country and it’s butter that they sell cheaply to get people in the door. But I doubt they are losing money on it.
Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05.
A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis."
I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda.
Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis
I believe OP's earnest statement that he's not trying to be political. I just think that propagandizing - if that was the motivation - would be dishonest by most definitions:
If one were just trying to boost Dems in the midterms by the classic "gas prices high -> loss for party in control" method, but they were saying "Inflation isn't that bad and gas prices are fine" during the 76% gas price spike in 2022, that's extreme bad faith.
And if one is implying "Fuel prices are higher now, therefore conflict with Iran is bad" I'd argue that's a shitty, cowardly, and selfish metric to base policy decisions on. Surely some battles are worth fighting because an enemy's behavior is too intolerable to allow, and gas prices being temporarily high is annoying, but not reason to capitulate.
It can also get a lot worse very quickly when countries' strategic reserves run dry.
While Wikipedia isn't always to be trusted (everyone knows that), the situation has been widely described as a crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis.
Just want to clear that up that the jargon is selected specifically from a general understanding and not one from a political skew!
I also wasn't tracking fuel prices back in 2022, otherwise I probably would have included similar dialog given the nature of what caused the prices to rise.
I think this is the only one in US without a warehouse.
The prices are at least $0.40 cheaper than nearby gas stations.
This means a couple of things: those places don't have 93, and the mileage you get out of a gallon is less.
I wish the government would ban 2 stroke engines (like leaf-blowers), which would have a much larger effect on air quality, vs using CA's oxygenated gas.
California being on the path to high prices this year was all over the news last year [5], but nobody seems to remember that, instead blaming it all on the Iran conflict.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65704
[2] https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/08/oil-compromise-calif...
[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/california-high...
[4] https://www.americanenergyalliance.org/2026/02/newsom-import...
[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2025/12/07/newsom...
10% more expensive than 5 years ago doesn't seem like a "crisis".
Diesel seems like more of a problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW
People spend money on gas, and sometimes one Costco has cheaper gas than another does.
The two Costcos that are nearest to me are listed at $3.65 and $3.79 right now. They're ~25 minutes apart. I think it would be fair to say that there's thousands of people living in-between where the difference in driving distance is irrelevant.
But if they decide that buying gas is a thing they're going to do today, and they can quickly compare the prices beforehand, then: They can use that data to help make an informed decision.
A 14-cent price delta isn't much, but if 11 gallons are purchased then it's enough to cover the price of a Costco hot dog and Coke (with refill). Not bad at all.
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Additionally: While Costco seemingly doesn't make (much) money on gas, that doesn't mean that they're always cheaper.
Suppose I were making a Costco trip today and I also need to buy gas. I'd be heading to the Costco that has gas for $3.65 because that one is much closer for me.
But I can get gas for $3.62 right now at the station down the block from my house. There's no line there (there's never a line there), there's no membership proof to futz around with, and it's super easy to get in and out of.
Since I have enough easy information to make an informed decision, then: I can tell that the smart move is to plan on skipping whatever line may be present at Costco's gas station and just buy gas down the block. This will save me both time and money.
But tomorrow? Who knows. The situation may be different, so I may make a different decision.
Spending any amount of time to save 20.5 cents per day is not worth it to me.
I'd love say that keeping an eye on gas prices and trying to time the market to buy on the right day are things that make poor use of my time. That sounds very nice.
I don't have the financial means to turn a blind eye to these kinds of costs, though. Things are rough over here.
But is that gas station selling Top Tier[1] gas? As far as I'm aware, Costco always sells Top Tier, and now they're rolling out Top Tier+.
[1] https://www.toptiergas.com/about-top-tier/
For me, locally, there's a grocery store chain that also has gas stations. If you are a member (which is free), you get a discounted rate on gas - usually only 3-5 cents more per gallon than Costco. And if you do enough groceries in a 3 month period, you occasionally get an additional 10-20 cents off your next filling, which makes it cheaper than Costco.
They're also open a lot more hours than Costco gas. And their lines are shorter.
I don't see the point of going to Costco to get gas.
Even when the lines are at capacity the Costco I go to (north of Seattle in Shoreline), I never wait more than like five minutes.
The only times I’ve seen it relatively empty were during bad storms.
That said, it’s not an hour wait. Around 20 minutes is average, but I rarely fill up there since I value my time much more than that.
Also most of the public chargers are networked, so you know when they are busy.