Frank, it's been a lot of years ago, but my Dad used to own service stations. The "profit" or markup on gasoline back then was about 10%; i.e., 3 cents a gallon on 30 cent gasoline. In those days, most stations were individually owned, not owned by the oil companies, and gasoline sales paid the overhead; i.e., rent, utilities, etc. Oil, filters, grease jobs, wash jobs, tires and tire repairs provided the "profit." And 50% of the service stations in the nation went broke or changed hands each year.
Of course we didn't have the shortages we're currently faced with, but we did periodically have "gas wars" among the companies, and the station owners had to adjust their prices when the oil companies told them to; i.e., you had to have a contract with an oil company to provide the gasoline and that contract, as well as the competition, limited what you could charge. We usually, but not always, had a few days warning when price changes were coming. So if prices were "normal" and we knew a price war was coming, we tried to run our tanks down low, so we could fill them at the lower price, but if we had too much on hand when the price dropped, we actually lost money by selling for less than we paid. Of course on the other hand, during a price war we wanted to keep our tanks full so when prices went back up, we made a few cents extra.
It was a tough business to be in, but by working 16 hours a day and providing excellent service Dad and I made a living at it.
