The range of prices in my area for Regular Unleaded is over 70 cents from highest to lowest price.
Haven’t seen a range that high for years.
The stations with the highest prices are stations who are low volume. or at least I think of them as low volume, and they are not repair shops who often are high priced and low volume.
Been thinking about when I have seen this range before. The only time I can remember this was about 25 or more years back when many stations were caught with high priced gas after middle east turmoil.
General store in the small town in Maine, where our second home is had to declare bankruptcy, and the owner went to work as a contract cleaner.
Up in your area for a fishing event my SO sponsored this weekend. On the coast of New Hampshire we saw from $3.50 to $4.18. Only one station had the $3.50 price, not the “member” price but the regular price.
At least we did not have to do the odd/even thing from years ago after middle east turmoil.
Though then we had commercial plates, boy did I get the looks, and even insults when I was in line.
Still remember people pushing cars when they ran out. Just to get to the pumps.
Of note when I was born it was $0.30 cents a gallon. When I started to drive it had skyrocketed to $0.36 a gallon. When I could drink, yet did not, at age 18 it was $0.53 cents a gallon. This due to the OPEC oil embargo. I remember on weekends when the stations were closed, going from station to station, and draining the hose into my motorcycle tank. I was able to fill it in a reasonably short time.
I find it reassuring that you noticed the spread. Sometimes, I wonder if anyone sees what I see.
Not surprising that I see doom when most other people see hope in the price drop.
I love the hose draining trick. I have a good friend who always took forever to fill his vehicles with gas because he claimed to have a technique which beat the measurements on the gas pump and gave him some amount of free gas.
He now has a Ford EV and charges it for free at a state owned charging station in RI. The ultimate freebie.
He is $400k up on his Nvidia investment, so this is not financial need, but a personality trait.
I still drive my MG, which has the unique advantage of a 1500cc engine. This means it rarely needs to be filled up, as one can turn off the fuel pump entirely, and let it run on the exhaust fumes of other cars ahead. With dual downdraft Webber carbs, it sucks in both air AND fuel in the form of exhaust vapors, you see.
The 1275cc engines have an even easier time of this.