This is more accurate - I've seen the paperwork for this.

When you are buying wholesale from yourself (Esso, Shell, PCan) you can shift the money wherever you want. See also - Enron. The 1 cent / litre proffit number is PR.

One more comment before the mods shut this down......

Most gasoline retailers are independent dealers. The gasoline margins are made at the refinery and corporate level, not at the independently owned gas retailers. Margins at the retail level are very slim

jezz you guys nice way to crash a thread..

If I may comment -

Gas prices aside, this thread is about Big Al's closing. Personally I am extremely saddened at this development. With the vast majority of SW stores in the north it was a nice place for a southerner like me to be able to visit on a whim. Franchise rules and hardware prices notwithstanding, I got most of my supplies (cleaning things, fish food, etc.) from there and the loss to me personally is, well, large. I was always on friendly terms with most of their employees, as well as Rick and Tom the owners, and ALWAYS appreciated the friendly "hello" and chats we would have every time I would go in. I don't get that kind of treatment anywhere else. I also depended on Big Als to scope out livestock items that I would be looking for, and I appreciated the extra mile they would go to find me something. Like my gigantea carpets. Nate finally finds a place he can import them from, and now they go out of business. Again, I might add, no other vendor I have ever dealt with has been willing to the same extent to work with me to the extent that Nate would.

I guess nothing lasts forever, but still, this sucks. Now I worry about my friends who work there and what will become of them. This sucks, sucks, sucks.

I never frequented Big Al's, but mainly due to the fact that it is the furthest saltwater shop from my house. I found their livestock selection to be unpredictable and limited lately, but it was still good to have another option when looking for something. Given this situation I can now see perhaps why their stock was not as good lately. I have bouhgt a variety of items there over the years, in fact I was there last week and picked up a school of green chromis.

It is never a good thing when a store has to close. One less store means less competition for the rest, which could lead to higher prices. Hopefully that will not happen and the business shift brings higher volumes and thus lower prices. I do plan to stop round to see about the sale merchandise.

More stores is good for everybody, it gets more people into the hobby. I was never a big customer at BAs but I am sorry to see them go for such a unfortunate reason.

I did not mind big al's they had a good selection of crabs and shrimp.I did not like the fish there tanks were always overstocked.But I do like haveing veriaty of fish stores.Thanks for the mantis shrimp big al's.

Big al's was the first store I went to when I got into this hobby, and the staff there was always great and always went out of their way to help.

Too bad........ I hope the owners come out of bankruptcy ok.

Cheers,
Vic [veng68]