Plain Talk: A North Dakota gas station owner responds to President Biden’s accusations about prices

MINOT, N.D. — President Joe Biden is placing the blame for top gasoline costs on gasoline station house owners.

“My message to the businesses working gasoline stations and setting costs on the pump is straightforward: it is a time of warfare and international peril,” he wrote in a tweet posted earlier than Independence Day. “Deliver down the worth you might be charging on the pump to mirror the fee you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

How does an precise gasoline station proprietor really feel about that?

“He appears to suppose we are able to drop the worth 20 cents to be patriotic,” Kent Satrang mentioned on this episode of Plain Speak.

Satrang is the proprietor of Petro Serve USA, which has a number of areas in North Dakota and Minnesota. He mentioned he does not actually get to decide on his gasoline costs. His firm posts them on the indicators alongside the highway, however the quantities are set by a really aggressive market.

A station that’s promoting gasoline at a worth that is considerably larger than competing stations merely will not see enterprise, which is why gasoline costs in a selected space are typically so shut.

And moreover, Satrang argues, corporations like his do not make a lot on the gasoline anyway. Satrang says his margin quantities to a “few cents a gallon.”

“The precise bank card firm makes extra off our gasoline for his or her charges than we do,” he mentioned, including that the majority of his income come from the meals, drinks, and different gadgets bought in his comfort shops.

Additionally on this episode, Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I focus on the sad state of America as one other Independence Day comes and goes.