If there’s one thing you might have noticed over the period of last 3 years or so, it’s how fast your business peers are running out of gas to keep their filling stations operational and sustainable.
Whether it’s Massachusetts, Manhattan or Texas – the number of gas stations have been plummeting all across the United States.
It’s concerning times for everyone associated with the fuel retail business.
What’s been causing these abrupt shutdowns?
It’s certainly not the lack of availability of gasoline; the large-scale shale oil production has got this issue well covered. Neither, the price of gasoline seems to be a problem here.
Rather, it’s the dwindling profit margins and the increasing operational costs that have forced gas station owners to close their business.
Sure, there are many fuel-hogging vehicles running on the streets and highways of the United States, but the question that station owners are found asking is: gasoline sales—but how much?
It’s simply not enough.
And understandably so.
Every successful business relies on more than one revenue stream. In this case, gas stations have only got gasoline to rely on. At least most of them.
The revenue generated from gasoline sales is simply not enough to help them cover their operational costs, let alone maintain healthy profits.
Where we’re witnessing the closure of gas pumping stations, at the same time, we’re also seeing CNG pumps popping up in different cities of the United States.
As of September, 2017, there were 1825 CNG stations operational in the United States serving 160,000 vehicles.
Yes, the numbers of CNG stations are not as high as one would like, but that’s just the point.
CNG stations are few, CNG operated cars are plenty (and are expected to only increase in future), so there’s a clear gap in demand and supply that needs to be bridged.
You can be that bridge.
Vehicle owners love CNG. It gives them high-mileage, its domestic availability is far more robust than gasoline and it keeps the environment clean and green.
The issue of availability of gasoline only got resolved in last few years or so as shale oil production grew. But we can’t ignore those days, when every vehicle owner would rush to their nearest filling station whenever the news of a war in the Middle East used to break out.
CNG has been our own, has been our own for a long time and will continue to be our own in the future. The nation can rely on it. In fact, our reserves of natural gas are so high that we’re expected to be exporting volumes of natural gas to China this year.
Detroit and our automobile manufacturers will be shelling out CNG cars in abundance, and when on road, these cars will be looking for a nearby CNG pump.
Installing CNG fueling can very well be a game changer for your filling station.
Interested in exploring your CNG fueling system options?
John W. Kennedy Company can help you.
We sell Gilbarco CNG dispensers and everything else needed to run your filling station smoothly, efficiently and profitably.
Check out our CNG fueling systems range.