Two garages have suspended petrol sales after a steep rise in wholesale prices since the conflict broke out in the Middle East.
On Friday March 13, Youlgrave Garage in Derbyshire reluctantly closed off its pumps, which it says are a lifeline to local villagers.
Mollie Ellis, who runs the workshop and MOT station with two super unleaded nozzles and one diesel, said the price of super unleaded had increased by 25 pence per litre, with diesel rising by nearly 50p.
She said the increase would have meant selling super unleaded at £1.85 per litre to customers, while diesel would need to be sold at £2 per litre: prices she felt uncomfortable with putting on the totem.
Being a small volume rural site selling just 1,000 litres of diesel and the same amount of super unleaded a month, the prices the 100-year-old business has been able to achieve from suppliers have always been on the high side, says Ellis.
But many locals rely on the outlet selling fuel with a strong loyalty from elderly customers and their health workers coming into the area, as well as tradesmen who use the super unleaded fuel for their power tools. The nearest alternative petrol stations are more than four miles away in Bakewell and Newhaven.
“We are a workshop and MOT centre predominantly with a small percentage of our business coming from fuel, so we don’t rely on it. But I feel bad that a lot of our customers do,” says Ellis.
The company made the decision after weeks of inflammatory language from ministers suggesting ’ripping off’ and ’price gouging’ in the petrol station industry. The rhetoric has been leaving petrol station owners and their staff facing customers blaming them for the price rises at the pump.
Ellis says this was a major factor in Youlgrave Garage taking action. “We’ve all been tarnished with the same brush of ripping off customers, and we wanted to show that we are a morally aware garage.”
She adds: “It was quite a hard decision but felt like the morally right thing to do.
“All our customers are totally understanding and we communicate with them on a Facebook page. As soon as oil prices have stabilised to a reasonable, affordable level we will start selling fuel again.”
Meanwhile, H Ballard & Son Motors, which runs a used car dealership and workshop in Welshpool, stopped selling petrol yesterday. It is still however dispensing diesel.
The cheapest unleaded it was quoted for was £1.52 per litre, and “to keep the lights on” it would have needed to charge on top of that 2 pence per litre at the pump.
This would have made the site the most expensive compared with three neighbouring towns, which would have been difficult to swallow for a business known locally for being the cheapest in town, says its general manager Beth Ballard.
“Even as far as Chester, nobody was selling for that,” says Ballard. The business has already been wrongly accused on social media for “cashing in” when its fuel prices reflected increases it received at wholesale, and so the partners decided to suspend petrol sales.
“We are busy enough with sales and servicing. Petrol is an extra thing,” says Ballard. ”We want to be transparent that we are not cashing in from an awful situation in the world.”
