ShareThisBy NATHAN MATTISE
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
What Monique Valdez does at 6 a.m. every day is always of great public interest.
She's the one who changes the gas price sign at the Albuquerque Gas N' Save Food Mart.
"Sometimes it gets real busy, and people are always asking what you're doing and if it's going up or down," Valdez said about her early morning work routine at the station.
"Lately, I've been changing it a lot," she said.
Valdez gets up at 5 a.m. to work the morning shift, which includes the 20-minute task of manually changing the gas price. It's vital to get it done as soon as she gets in so passersby don't see the previous price, she said.
Valdez doesn't need a ladder to adjust the sign 10 to 12 feet overhead. She has what she describes as a "big, really long pole with a suction thing on it."
With that 5-pound pole, she removes number cards and replaces them with the cards she spreads out in the parking lot.
Station owner Fidel Jawad said he never changes prices during the day.
"Sometimes it'll go up for a day or two and I don't even change it, because I want to make sure the price is staying up" before boosting his own prices.
Gas prices may be what draws customers into the station, but individuals in the business are quick to point out that sales of milk, candy bars and cigarette lighters are where the money comes from.
"No one makes money on gas," said Greg Stadjuhar, vice president of sales and marketing for Skyline Products, a Colorado Springs company that manufactures electronic signs. "You make it by selling the hot dogs or the cola. If you take out the taxes or credit card fees, you're lucky to make two or three cents a gallon."
But with gas prices changing rapidly and drivers looking to save even just a few cents a gallon, updating gas prices is becoming more and more of a priority for many station owners, and it's making manual gas pricing signs like Jawad's disappear in favor of their electronic counterparts.
According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, almost 20 percent of all gas pricing signs in the United States are electronically operated.
Major gas retailers have started switching over to electronic signs. In Albuquerque, ConocoPhillips has purchased new signs for its stations.
"It's simply safer to change the prices than the manual way of using a ladder," said Terry Hunt, corporate spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips. "It has a better image, look-wise, and it's just more modern. We started transitioning three years ago, and we've had nothing but positive feedback on them from customers and employees."
The electronic gas pricing signs have been available since the 1980s, but their sales have boomed recently with more big companies looking to adjust to rapid changes as efficiently as possible, Stadjuhar said.
His company has recorded double-digit growth in each of the last four years. He estimates that the company ships out 15 to 20 signs each week despite prices ranging from $2,000 to $50,000, which depend on variables such as size and the number of colors. The average sign goes for about $7,000, Stadjuhar said.
A station can choose between a classic scrolling sign or a light-emitting diode sign reminiscent of something at a Las Vegas casino. Signs can operate individually, with controls for price shifting operated by the store manager, or linked to a system operated out of corporate headquarters or other central location.
"We want the customer to have what they want," Stadjuhar said. "The store manager or workers don't want to go out in the elements or risk getting hit in a parking lot. And corporate loves it, because they can react quickly and stay up with competition."
Store managers say that when gas price stays higher "for even a few hours, there's an impact," Stadjuhar said.
"Like one station owner said to me, 'I don't put the price of my milk, cokes and sandwiches for everyone to see. The only price they see is gas.'"
Stadjuhar said the average gas station today changes prices seven times a week (up from twice in 2000) and that high-volume stations may change their prices two, three, even four times a day.
Despite such competition, station owners boasting manual gas price signs are in no rush to update. Jawad said if he changed his prices multiple times a day as the price was rising, he might lose business.
"It gets to be a madhouse here," he said on a recent day as he made change for a customer. "From 10 a.m. to noon this morning we had lines of 10 to 20 people. It's all my fault, because I dropped the gas prices."
