Gas Stations Jammed In Tennessee
Michael Silence sent me an email yesterday about establishing a coordinated state-wide effort in following gas prices across the state.
I put the word out on Twitter as well. If you are seeing elevated gas prices, you can send them to Michael there.
Most of my day was spent at various convenience stores and gas companies around the area watching weary clerks and some extremely pissed of consumers.
Many people believe what’s going on is simple as I talked to them. The believe they are being gouged. Several of the managers of those stores even went on record saying that they anticipate that things will smooth out in the next week but A.) Gas speculations created a minor panic here with several stations running out of gas. and B.) that from 9/10 to 9/12, gas went up $.84. (That number does not reflect yesterday afternoon’s spikes which I will get today.)
One woman who manages one of the stores said she is a consumer too and that she wanted people to know she was just having to pass her costs over to the consumer. A man that runs the local gas companies explained that some of the local gas stations were going to run out of gas, as hundreds of consumers were filling up thinking at a lower rate, however when the weekend load comes in at a higher cost that to make any profit gas would hit nearly $5 although I didn’t see any signs roll over to that yesterday.
People were paying attention. Oil is cheaper these days. The two words that my staff and I heard from everyone from our county mayor to men and women jamming the pumps was “price gouging.” City and county leaders have put in some wiggle room in it’s latest budgets but I don’t think they truly anticipated this.
One of the reporters covered a man calling everyone from Gov. Bredesen’s office, Corker’s, Tanners and others asking basically what could be done.
You know that was a wash to some degree but that he was trying to educate himself and see what his elected officials were doing is commendable.
One rehab nursing facility shut down it’s buses because, frankly, they couldn’t afford the gas.
Of course, this is temporary, Within about a week things should settle down, but that people panicked so quickly was a bit overwhelming even from my old grizzled perspective.
I think that folks can’t be naive enough to think that the impacts of the recent hurricanes wasn’t going to effect us and they understand that.
But this situation is two-fold because we are talking gas money. The winners are the oil companies.
The losers are the American people and, if yesterday was any indication, they know it.
I think those who rushed to fill up even though they didn’t need to are the real problem. Panic-driven runs on supplies is doing as much to run up the price as Gustav or Ike.
It seems whenever we’re told not to panic….people panic.
Makes me shudder to think what will happen when a true emergency hits.
Frank,
EXACTLY!
As news folks, did you have your hands full yesterday as well?
It’s a tough position to be in. You want to report what’s going on, yet at the same time you don’t want to be another Henny Penny sounding alarms and adding to the problem.
On the air, I tried to stress the positives: that this was a temporary situation, that many suppliers were reporting they had plenty of gas if only folks wouldn’t panic-buy and also that Gov. Bredesen got a waiver from the EPA on certain fuel standards to ensure adequate supplies.
But try telling that to folks busy looking up for a falling sky.
Absolutely. Same thing here. A lot of chicken little talk but on the other hand, due to our location, prices have gotten higher on basic needs things that I think this may have been the icing on the cake.
Our governor declared a state of emergency here thanks to the high gas prices. In Franklin (for some reason), gas shot up to $4.59, and here in the big city (our gas is routinely 30 cents higher than the gas in the next county), we’re only up to about $4.00 (that I know of… I’m going to go look later, partially because I forgot to get gas on my way home yesterday).
My question is why is Tennessee apparently running out of gas every other filling station, but here there’s been nothing like that? I really doubt we’ve got more gas in our storage tanks.
Wait lets take a moment to think about what the habits of our fellow Tennesseans are.
If the news announces a snow storm is coming the schools close and everyone rushes out to buy bread and milk. What they are going to do with bread and milk in a snow storm no clue. But if this is announced by the media you cannot find bread or milk in a 40 mile radius.
Why would gas be any different. The media is informing us that we are the reason that the price is high. I recall them saying the price was raised so we would not purchase it.
How could you say we made the price high then in the next news cast say the stations that have no gas will not have any until possible Wednesday of next week.
I had no choice but to purchase gas today at 4:00 I drove by 28 stations no gas I was forced to drive 45 miles away and wait in line for 1 hr and 15 min.
This is America land of the free ( I don’t know about you but if I am not free to purchase gas at the first station I see how free am I) Home of the brave. ( Brave to wait in line for 1hr and 15min to get charged $4.19 cents per gallon for 87 octane that would have only cost me $3.99 with cash).
How do all the town up to us Chattanooga , Eagle Mountain have gas and all the towns past us Bolling Green and Franklin Ky but nashville doesn’t.
I guess the underground pipline stops somewhere before it gets to us only to reconnect after us…… Come on what sense does this really make
Absolutley none at all.