Yep. Diesel is $4.19 a gallon @ both Chevron stations on the corner of Beverly Blvd. and LaBrea, $3.45 and dropping @ Mobil station on corner of Olympic and Western, which is always a loss-leader station.
It's interesting to me to see two such different business models at work. They obviously both pay the same for the fuel but one decides to give it away for candy bar and bottled water sales(?) inside the store and the other decides that they will sell less fuel but make more on it. Or something like that.
There is a huge convenience factor in gas sales where they know that people will generally buy it in their own neighborhood, especially in the fancier parts of town. There are a couple of stations in Beverly Hills that have always been close to a dollar higher than anywhere else and they are always busy. Sure, their rent is higher but they also have full-service pumps, (very rare in CA.), where they tack on an extra 25 cents a gallon or something and people gladly pay it.
I had a girlfriend years ago who lived in BH and was not exactly a price conscience consumer. She was filling up @ the full service island and I said, "do you know that this gas is a dollar a gallon more than down the street?"
"Oh, really?"
Some people don't even look at the price. Just pull into their neighborhood station and hand over a credit card. I'm obsessed w fuel prices, partly because I buy a lot and it's a major expense. But the odd thing is that I'll pick up a restaurant tab for a couple hundred bucks when I'm flush w/o batting an eye but drive to a different station to save 10 cents a gallon, every time.
