[More from my lunchtime review of the papers…]
An article in today’s Ventura County Star provides some fascinating insight into the service station business. The article is about the retirement of the owner of Dikes Chevron at Victoria Avenue and Highway 101, who sold the station after near 40 years. The station was sold for $5.5M.
Have you ever wondered how much money a gas station makes? According to this article, total monthly revenue averaged $800,000 this year, with gasoline sales totalling about $680,000 monthly while revenue from the station’s convenience store and Subway sandwich shop are about $120,000 a month. The station is one of the area’s busiest, selling about 230,000 gallons of gasoline a month, or 7,500 to 8,000 gallons a day on average.
Many of us growing up remember gas stations as service stations, where you could get autowork done as well. I distinctly remember that being true for Yarnell’s Union in Playa Del Rey (long gone), now an ARCO. Where did those service bays go? The article gives the answer, when it noted how the associated garage, a member for decades of the Automobile Club of Southern California’s “Approved Auto Repair” network, was an integral part of the service station until 2002, when Chevron Corp. ordered its dealers to either close their garages or move them out of the stations. Chevron mostly replaced garages with convenience stores, which cost less to operate and generated more revenue. The company also did not want its brand associated with auto repair businesses because the company could not control the quality of the work.
How much has gas gone up? In December 1968, when the station opened, regular gasoline was 39.9 cents a gallon.
Now, regular readers know my obsession with obscure highway related history, and petrolania is certainly a part of that. To that end, I’ll point you to a wonderful site detailing the history of Standard Oil done by my fellow roadgeek, R.V. Droz.
By the way, as R.V. notes, ConocoPhillips, a daughter company of Standard Oil, is dropping the (76) Ball. Help save the Union 76 Ball! Don’t let ConocoPhillips become the company without Balls.
