Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner Word of low gas prices at Quick Stop No. 10 on South Pacific Avenue in Kelso kept lines long into the night as vehicles lined up six and seven deep at the pumps. |
Gas station owner scraps steep prices
Tuesday, September 9, 2003 8:18 AM PDT
By M. L. Madison
Printable version
E-mail this articleRay Caldwell may be the only gas station owner in town with happy customers.
Although gas prices have dropped slightly since Labor Day, they aren't going down fast enough for him. Saying he's sick of oil companies gouging the public, Caldwell, who owns Quick Stop No. 10 in Kelso with his wife, Joanne, has slashed the prices at his pumps to $1.49 a gallon.
That's almost 40 cents a gallon cheaper than the average price of $1.88 a gallon in Longview, Kelso and Rainier, according to a survey Monday by The Daily News.
Caldwell said he has been losing money since oil companies hiked prices last month, when he paid $1.97 a gallon for gas and charged his customers $1.91. Prices from his supplier have recently dropped to $1.49 a gallon, he said, and now he's selling gas at his cost to make a point.
"The prices don't need to go up 50 cents a gallon in a two-week period," he said. "I've owned this station since February, and every time there's a major holiday, they raise the prices -- Easter, Memorial Day weekend, July 4th, Labor Day. They say that there's a shortage, and more people are traveling. But our volume doesn't change."
Caldwell said he's not worried about losing money, because his supplier told him prices will drop again soon.
Gas prices in the local area jumped about 20 cents per gallon between late June and early August, from $1.63 to $1.83 on average among stations surveyed. They climbed even higher immediately before Labor Day with most hovering just under $2 per gallon. Nationally, the price of regular was $1.71 per gallon on Monday. Washington's average price was significantly higher, at $1.93. A year ago, the averages in the nation and in Washington were $1.40 and $1.46 respectively.
Station managers interviewed by The Daily News reacted to Caldwell's announcement with disbelief and said they had no plans to drop their prices.
"You can't sell it that cheap, no way," said Jaswinder Kang, who manages Minit Mart No. 66 in Kelso. "How is he going to survive?
"If my next load is, say, $1.70, my price might be 5 or 10 cents higher than that," Kang said. "We make less and less when the price goes up -- we can't raise it as much as the gas companies do. It's crazy. They always have an excuse to raise the price, but nobody controls it, and we, the people, get hurt."
The manager of Triangle Exxon in Longview, who declined to give his name, said the station's prices were set by the corporation.
"It really hurts everybody else when people do things like that," he said, referring to Caldwell. "Our prices are based on what we pay. It's not as if they're changed indiscriminately."
Although local stations hadn't dropped prices by Monday afternoon, Caldwell thinks they'll have to do so in order to stay competitive.
"I'm going to make some enemies in town," he acknowledged. "Prices never go down as fast as they go up," he said. "What they expect us to do is drop it real slow, and then we make a lot of money."
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