“When losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
Called Freedom Fuel Network, the enterprise encompasses dozens of gas stations throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, USA Today reported, although it isn’t exactly clear which locations are open for business. Plastered in American flag decals and “Freedom Fuel” branding, the gas stations seem to be selling unleaded gasoline for the fixed-price of $3.47 per gallon, about 32 cents cheaper than the current average price in the US.
According to GasBuddy, nearby prices range from $3.85 to as much as $4.49 — no doubt reflecting the slower drip of oil from the president’s costly war on Iran, which burst back into active fighting this week.
As head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy Patrick De Haan told the Philadelphia Inquirer, the current price of crude oil means there’s no way Freedom Fuel’s $3.47 price point can turn a profit.
“Stations selling at this price, it’s not sustainable,” De Haan explained. “Generally, when losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
De Haan raises an obvious question: who is paying for it? If the stations are losing money on every gallon, somebody has to make up the difference somewhere — whether out of Trump’s pocket, that of a friendly donor, or the taxpayer’s. And if it’s a private company taking the hit, how long until they stop subsidizing Pennsylvania drivers?
Already, the stunt seems to be distorting local markets. As of Wednesday, a nearby Sam’s Club in Dresher dropped its price to match the $3.47 figure — surely good news for anybody buying gas in South Eastern Pennsylvania, but as always, the devil is in the details.
I’m all for hating on Trump as much as the next guy, but gas prices by me are around $3.39 across the board, so I don’t understand how the GaaBuddy CEO can say a price like that is impossible.
Bro MAGA is copying Russia again!
When the (Venezuelan) oil is stolen and the wars are paid for by the taxpayers, everything is profit.
Forgot about this oil reserve, I was thinking he’s laundering Russian oil
russia doesn’t even have gas for themselves… Kazakhstan is giving them fuel.
My immediate thought is that his billionaire friends (likely oil barons) are subsidizing it until the day after the election, at which point they will reap the profits/bribes. My money is on stolen Venezuelan oil as well.
The economics of importing Russian oil and distilling it into gasoline illicitly do not add up. More likely this is just regular ol gas being sold at a discount as funded by our billionaire overlords
I’ve been waiting for it to crop up. Right after the illegal attack on Venezuela, Trump bragged about personally having a tanker of oil that no one ended up wanting. We had a stable oil supply. Then not too long after that, the attacks on Iran started. I have no idea if it’s anything in the grand scheme of grifting and cons and murder but I’m guessing it was a factor in some way.
I always assumed he decided he needed Venezuela’s oil after he was told he would be attacking Iran soon.
I’ve assumed Trump thought oil= money, not realising Venezuelan oil is among the most expensive to refine. America does however have refining capacity for that type of oil, as to turn the Venezuelan oil profitable he’d attack Iran and hurt international energy trades
Wouldn’t that just be some perfect shit-icing on the shit-cake. If the Freedom Fuel is from Russian oil.
Its probably just an advertising campaign to try to win the midterms. “SEE, FREEDOM.GAS. VOTE FOR FASCISM PLZ.”
Also, isn’t there already a gas station chain branded Freedom? Are they violating trademarks?
This is ILLEGAL to Undercut the Competition!
-Free Market Republicans!
This is the same free-market-humping conservative movement whose party head is now slinging around tariffs like they were going out of style…
Come join the anticommunist Republican party. They’ve got:
- Price controls
- Closed markets
- State-owned industry
All my libertarian friends hate it, but somehow keep voting for it.
Also: do they really hate it, tho?
The ones I talk to do.
Yes, because supporting the GOP means they get to use slurs again. Thats what really matters.
They’re still your friends?
Libertarians are just conservatives + weed - religion. They claim to not be cons but still vote 100% in that direction
Libertarians are just insanely stupid people who wish to appear intelligent. Because they think those views make them seem intelligent, lol
Libertarians are just the ideological opposite but intellectual equivalent of tankies.
A number of the ones in my acquaintance circles are just being propagandized.
The first 10 or so talking points speak well to prepper adjacent and it kinda feels like it wouldn’t be that hard for things to fall over. Then they start the fiscal republican tract, so their businesses can make as much money as possible.
By the time they get down to the nuts and bolts of what a true free economy would look like, they check out with we’d figure that out real quick instead of figuring out that it’s just another pyramid scheme putting their own people in absolute power stealing every last cent of money that goes to keeping up roads and anything having to do with food provisioning and safety.
Yeah my assessment is too simplistic. First, the person is looking to find a way to codify their self-serving desires (ie. the business owner like you mention). Then they decide it needs to sound smarter than it is. BOOM: libertarianism is the perfect fit. Or at least that’s always been my impression. When they try to explain their views, they seem really focused on how much sense they make and how logically consistent they are being. Inconvenient facts are never acknowledged though, of course.
100% agree
Libertarianism is not a real ideology. Its just three raccoons in a trench coat. Anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms.
What else would they do?
Vote for a democrat?
I’m hoping the keep their asses at home…
If only their purity testing was as strong as the left’s
I suppose they must not live in a state with a modern voting system. Staying at home shouldn’t proclude anyone from voting, but here we are.
Well yeah, but “staying home” is a colloquialism for not voting. I don’t think that meant that mail in voting is bad.
I knew what they meant obviously, and I didn’t think they were saying mail in voting was bad, but I will admit it took me a half second to remember that some states still require in-person voting.
This is also coming from someone who learned that going to the polls wasn’t a historical thing when I was like 22, when polls being closed made national news or I saw a article about how racist/classist in-person voting was or something. I always just thought America had moved on from that a long time ago, as I grew up in Washington, and I didn’t know a time when my parents had to vote in person. One of the many things keeping me attached to this state I suppose.
If they want less authoritarianism, yes!
Or better yet, somebody who calls themselves “socialist” or “progressive,” because at least they tend to be decent on civil rights, if not necessarily stuff like economic policy. It’s ridiculous, but Bernie Sanders is one of the most actually-libertarian people in Congress.
If some of the “progressives” could give up on some of their overly-bureaucratic ideas with excessive means-testing (like welfare instead of UBI, “affordable” [i.e. “subsidized”] housing instead of zoning reform to reduce costs, etc.) they’d be perfect actual-libertarian candidates.
I mean, what choice do they even have? They have to vote R.
No they don’t. Lots of (D)s, and even the occasional (I) like Bernie Sanders, are less authoritarian than pretty much every single (R) is these days.
Silly person, that’s not what communist means. It means “anything/anyone we don’t like.”
It’s more of an amorphous ideal than a concrete set of “rules”.
Any time you step out of the classroom political labels become meaningless.
“Capitalist” America built a giant interstate highway network that seized millions of acres of private land.
“Communist” China has a few score billionaires.
And don’t get me started on the National Socialist Party and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Close, communism is anything they think they can’t profit from.
It’s owned by Trump not the state. Closer to authoritarian dictatorship than communism.
Where’s the fuel coming from though? I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s from Venezuela and he’s literally stealing it via the US government to sell himself.
They’re the same picture. (The former, that is.)
- State approved media
Oh yeah thats a good one
and it will be as shit as if it were run by commies
get it now?
what happens when your cheap gas is no longer available but all the competitors already dried up?
Then someone will open a competitor. Petrol distribution isn’t a natural monopoly, so without some kind of underhanded behaviour, that scenario won’t last.
Trump could ban new competition but he could also ban competition today if he wanted to.
6.47
You dropped this: 8
its likely the ethanol type that damages the engines?
Walmart
Imagine gas companies going out of business
lord dipshit has managed to bankrupt casinos. not once, not twice… but six times. so why not another industry that, in the u.s. with this ‘leadership’, can basically print money?
I wouldn’t trust this fuel to start a forest fire, let alone fuel a car.
Me, Laughs in electric bicycle.
Please look up how electricity is generated in your area, your laughter will be short lived if its in Cali or most of the east coast as most of it is still on fossil fuels
Even if electricity were all created ONLY using standard car gasoline, generating electricity in bulk on some.giant fucking motor and distributing it out to electric vehicles, would be more efficient than a million little engines running around stopping and accellerating and generting power to power one vehicle.
I think you’re missing my point here. Its not that the previous commenter should feel bad or is not being efficient, its that fossil fuels still power a large part of our grid and if there is a fuel shortage, your efficiency won’t matter.
Still coming out way ahead for how much fossil fuel you’re using to do the same job
Again, not a note on the efficiency of an ebike, I don’t think any serious person has ever made the argument against an ebike over an ICE. Just a thought on that we should be aware of where the electricity that powers our grid is coming from. Hopefully those thoughts turn into an internet search and then into votes. Places like Cali and NE like to drive their EVs but are still fully reliant on fossil fuels.
Surely a power plant is still more efficient than a small engine.
It is, in is by a huge margin. Doing things in bulk, efficient, standardized ways, will always be more efficient, for any task.
Look up transmission and transformer losses
still negligible compared to the inefficiency of an internal combustion engine
Huh. Looked up the numbers and you’re right
well-to-wheels studies for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) often find that ~70–80% of the electrical energy ends up as motion (especially when including regenerative braking), versus ~12–30% for gasoline ICE vehicles
The ICE that has been tweaked and optimized for more than a century is literally almost 10x less efficient , even accounting for power line resistance, impedance from transformers, AC/DC converstion, etc
The point is everyone is still dependant on fossil fuels. Having an electeic car or bike won’t save you from rolling blackouts
Not much comes from oil. It’s mostly coal, ng, hydro, nuclear, wind, etc. We could have a fuel (gasoline/oil) crisis and he will still laugh.
Plus, an ebike is ridiculously more efficient per unit energy. Any macro thing you’re trying to get at is solved by ebikes.
Notice the part where I said fossil fuels, not just oil, and where half the stuff you listed were fossil fuels. The issue is still an issue. If home wants to laugh, then so be it, but let’s not pretend like this crisis won’t affect all of us down the line.
Notice the part how this is about an oil crisis?
Oil crisis leads them to look for the next quick fix, which are the other fossil fuels. Let’s not be so dense as to think it stops there.
Quick fix isn’t going to fill up our gas tanks with coal tomorrow. So his Ebike during this oil crisis is fine. We can break this down. Ok I’ve explained things but you seem intent on combining everything together so ciao.
I want to know the quality of the fuel. I’m betting there’s a significant amount of water and other contaminants in it.
Not to mention you credit card details being shared with their network.
Its probably the refined transfats from his blood after a lifetime of daily McDonalds meals.
Probably lead. And electrolytes.
It’s got what cars crave
GASDO!
The usual Trump quality: Starts at rock bottom and somehow manage to dig down.
You can’t make this up
If it’s 25% cheaper, it’s probably 40% water.
I mean after all the frakking in some places the water is combustible, so hey they might get away with it for a minute!
Seeing what he did so far, it’s 100% used toilet water, maybe even without the water part.
Venezuelan petrol.
Wouldn’t it be convenient if this “private retailer” somehow got free access to US fuel reserves?
Or Venezuela’s
Gas in Wisconsin has been fluctuating around $3.40-3.60 the last two weeks, today its $3.49. This is not just Costco and Woodman’s, but also some pure gas stations like Citgo. According to the article they must all be loosing money. Is there anything I’m missing here?
Well, you see, different areas of the country have different prices for things. For instance: a 1200 sqft house in Los Angeles might sell for $1.5M, while the same house might sell for $300k in Lake Minnetonka. Due to real estate costs, simple things need to be sold for more money to make up the cost of renting/buying that store space. A gallon of milk is only $2 in Danville, IN but costs $5 in Los Angeles. Gas can cost $6.39 in Los Angeles at the same time as only being $2.89 in Tuscaloosa, AL.
Proximity to refineries also makes a difference in price. So, if you see all the stations in NJ and PA charging $3.85 to $4.49, then that is going to be the rough cost for that area, even if it is much higher than in your area.
EDIT: States also charge different taxes on gas.
My guess would be that different regions have different costs associated with transport and different tax requirements.
Taxes on gas seem to be particularly high in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Nevertheless, after searching a bit, there is also a Philly gas station around Philadelphia selling it for… $3.47. To me, this outrage about Freedom Fuel feels either like effective marketing, or its other Petro companies trying to keep out a competitor to justify their profitable “market prices”. Even if its something else, it seems effective enough to have Democrats defending the Petroleum industries pricing practice.
@cannedtuna Let me get this straight…
City-run grocery stores selling at-cost: Communist Bread Lines
Gas stations with government-controlled gas prices: Freedom Fuel Network
