How much do a gas station owner make in a year?

Answer 1

1million

newdiv

The previous answer is nonsense, most station owners make a modest income, and most of their profit comes from an attached mini mart or car wash, not from selling fuel.

Edit: Wanted to also add.

While at certain times, profit margins can be low. During times of speculation and rapid price changes in the early stages (eg the price of a barrel of oil), gas stations will have multiple periods of huge profits.

As many of you have noticed this year (2011) gas stations, will change their prices daily or even multiple times per day. But do they get shipments of gas multiple times per day?

Most gas stations do not get fuel shipments that often. So for example suppose you purchased fuel a day ago and a price for a decent profit margin on that fuel would be $3.50 a gallon. Then all of a sudden speculators cause the price per barrel of oil to increase. you as a gas station have not been affected by this at all for the time being, you still have your current inventory that is profitable at $3.50 . But you seeking profits will increase your price to $4 over the course of a few days. The gas that was previously making you a profit of (let say) 20 cents a gallon, is now making you 70 cents per gallon.

This increase profit margin will last until you have to purchase fuel again. since the fuel costs will continue to rise. if you were to graph your profits, you would get what appears to be a EKG reading but in your case. the profits continuously rise until you need to get more inventory, then they drop off to a baseline profit. then through daily increases, the profit margins begin to increase and finally reaching their peak before dropping as you purchase more inventory.

Gas stations are able to do this because of mass media. if people have the mind set that prices will be increasing daily then people will accept it. Gas stations are not charities, they will charge what ever they can get away with.

if the media were to fabricate news of the price of a barrel of oil falling to $50 a barrel, within a day, you will see gas prices going down as people will be expecting lower prices, and gas stations will not be able to justify their prices.