Strange and Wierd Facts

[nwtv2003]

There's quite a few small indie stations in west wales.

Usually quite expensive, though. I had to stop off at one today and unleaded was 98.9p a litre.

There was one near us, but it's prices were rather expensive, so it closed down, it's due for demolition soon and what do they want to replace it with? A Tesco Express believe it or not.

Around Warrington there are next to none, but if you venture into South Cheshire down the A49 there are loads, again charging more than what the Supermarkets would sell.

There's a 'Power' petrol station on the A57 through Irlam going into Eccles that is really expensive, yet I've never seen a car stop there at all.

I'm narked off that it's back at nearly £1 per litre! Surely it should go down sometime soon, as it did last time....please, running cars aren't cheap.

[Stuart*]

I think rural areas are now the only place you will find the small independent petrol station. But these will eventually get swallowed up by the supermarkets as they expand their smaller stores (Sainsburys Local, Tesco Metro etc).

The small petrol station at the top of my road was turned into a Safeway/BP about 5 years ago, and is now a Tesco Metro. I'm sure the majority of their income is from the shop rather than fuel. It can be very handy though as it's open 24/7.

[Nick Harvey]

To roll back to the point about how many stations and how many pumps there are nowadays, compared with years ago, I think most of the change is down to tank sizes.

I can just about remember the car my old man had when I was young, which had, if I remember rightly, a three gallon tank. Now it's nothing for a car to have a twenty gallon, or ninety litre, tank.

That means an increase from about ninety miles to about six hundred miles between fillings, which means people aren't forever worrying about how far away the next station is, like my father always seemed to be doing.

Now you can usualy afford to drive past a small, probably expensive, independent and head for a cheaper chain in the next town, as you can probably do another fifty or sixty miles even when the little yellow light comes on.

That fact, in itself, has driven the independents out of business and the downward spiral has continued from there.

[Jamez]

There's quite a few small indie stations in west wales.

Usually quite expensive, though. I had to stop off at one today and unleaded was 98.9p a litre.

I live near the UK's only Chevron (Texaco) oil refinery. Maybe that has something to do with the slightly lower price?

One thing I've noticed with Tesco, though, is that the price of their petrol varies wildly throughout the UK. For a while between 2004-2006, Tesco was the only petrol station in the town of Pembroke Dock and charged more-or-less what it liked for petrol. Then Asda came along with petrol a couple of pence cheaper and Tesco in P.Dock immediately followed suit.

However, as my car is quite fussy about the brand of fuel I put in it, I only buy petrol from Texaco or Shell. If I fill up my car with supermarket, especially Tesco, petrol, the performance of my car drastically changes for the worse.

[Ronnie Rowlands]

Unleaded at Asda was sloping, it actually dropped to about 86p, but now it's up again at 94.

[Adders]

There's a 'Power' petrol station on the A57 through Irlam going into Eccles that is really expensive, yet I've never seen a car stop there at all.

Is that the Airport Garage you're talking about?

If it is, I'm not surprised that no-one uses it when there's a bloody great big Tesco petrol station a couple of miles down the road charging much lower prices.

[Nick Harvey]

One thing I've noticed with Tesco, though, is that the price of their petrol varies wildly throughout the UK.

A lot of that is to do with the 5p off each whole litre if you spend £50 in store promotion.

I've notice that the Tescos which ARE doing that promotion keep their basic price about 3p a litre higher than the ones who AREN'T.

The same thing seems to happen with exactly the same promotion at Sainsburys.

It works out that you only, effectively, get about 2p off a litre with the promotion.

Whilst on Tesco and Sainsburys and the comments about which brands make the car run better, the rapid racer doesn't get on at all well with Tesco (Trowbridge) petrol, but is perfectly okay running on stuff from Sainsburys (Chippenham).

Very odd, as I thought most of the "cheap" stuff all came from the same refinery these days.

[nwtv2003]

There's a 'Power' petrol station on the A57 through Irlam going into Eccles that is really expensive, yet I've never seen a car stop there at all.

Is that the Airport Garage you're talking about?

If it is, I'm not surprised that no-one uses it when there's a bloody great big Tesco petrol station a couple of miles down the road charging much lower prices.

Yep, that's the one! I don't think the Tesco Extra is that near surely? Anyway, you're easier driving there or to Morrisons at Eccles. Talking about Morrisons I filled up today and they've claimed to have froze the price in someway, so they were charging about 92.9p per litre, which isn't too bad.

[Stuart*]

If it is, I'm not surprised that no-one uses it when there's a bloody great big Tesco petrol station a couple of miles down the road charging much lower prices.

Yep, that's the one! I don't think the Tesco Extra is that near surely? Anyway, you're easier driving there or to Morrisons at Eccles. Talking about Morrisons I filled up today and they've claimed to have froze the price in someway, so they were charging about 92.9p per litre, which isn't too bad.

Get a room you two!

Or find somewhere cheap to buy petrol