| I would like to know myself. I have heard an argument from one person saying that the reason Arco is cheaper than the the likes of Chevron, Shell, etc. is because they don't accept credit cards, so they don't have to remove any from their profits for that. They also don't have full service available, which I guess cuts down on costs too? I dunno, I've never used full service because I always figured you had to pay extra for that. Do you?
I had a friend who once told me to stay away from Arco because "they piss in their gas". That made me laugh, but since he wasn't a mechanic I don't know where he got that idea. My most reliable source comes from my brother-in-law who works on cars a lot (he's actually a mechanical engineer though) in his spare time. He says that he and his friend (who IS a mechanic) can always tell when a car regularly uses Arco gas because of all the filthy deposits left behind. I can't remember which part of the engine they were talking about though. He gets his gas mostly from Sam's Club, which is a lot like Costco, right? Their gas tends to be cheaper too, sometimes cheaper than Arco depending on the location.
I have another friend who used to drive an old VW bug. She said whenever her bug started to act sluggish her dad would tell her to put a bottle of Techron into the tank. She said that would clear out the gunk and it would run much better. That leads me to believe that Chevron gas is good for your car, and thus explain why it tends to be one of the most expensive of the lot.
However I don't have any statistics to share, and all this stuff with pricing may just be a marketing ploy to capture a particular audience. |