So I decided to add "Oil Baron" to my personal resume and open my own gas station. But this gas station would not be like any other sir, oh no no, this one would be built to help support my community because that's how I roll son. My idea is to have a co-op gas station that would charge the "ACTUAL" price that gas costs companies buying it from a refinery and charge a monthly fee to use the station. You would get a membership card that was assigned to each car and the pump would not activate without the card being swiped and the attendant approving that the car matches what the computer in the booth says the card is tied to. With this station you would get gas at like $1.25 a gallon and all you would have to do is pay a monthly membership fee of $50 and work one 8 hour shift at the station per month.After polling a few friends I soon discovered I associate myself with a bunch of lazy bums who were severely turned off by the idea of doing any actual work. So I changed it to only be open during the day and now I have to build some sort of super barbwire covered electrified evil fence of protection and doom to keep the riff-raff out at night.
Doing the math (with my made up assumed gas price) to make it beneficial to spend the monthly fee you would need to use at least 30 gallons of gas per month. To make it financially beneficial for me to leave my job at least 70 people would need to be members. That's not too crazy! I'm sure there are at least 70 people around here that use more than 30 gallons of gas per month, I know I do.
So I diligently went to work researching the probability of me doing this and I stumbled across an interesting little factoid. At MOST gas stations only make 10-20 cents per gallon of gas and that doesn't include the fees banks charge for using credit and debit cards. Since I would be a no cash business this would mean at the best of times I would be at the 10 cents saved by using my gas station (that's even if I can keep up with the QT's and Shell's that have more buying power than I do). Doing that math I would need over 70 people using over 500 gallons of gas per month (or about 10,000 miles with an 20 mile per gallon car).
Thus my short lived dreams of becoming an Oil Baron and Community Hero are dashed against the rocks of reality. Unless someone knows 70 people who drive over 10,000 miles per month? It's only like 13-14 miles every hour of the month, that can't be too hard to find, right?
