New York → Why are all the Exxon/Mobil stations closing?

Here on Long Island, it seems I notice a new station has closed each week.
Does anyone know why all the stations seem to be closing, is Exxon/Mobil getting out of the "gas" business??

Depends on if they're Owned/Operated or Independent. Independents might just be folding to business pressure (pricing / profit) in the local environment, coupled with pricing of the actual product.

Hard to say really. I hadn't seen anything on Exxon/Mobil folding or scaling back operations.

"Why are all the Exxon/Mobil stations closing?"

They're not.

Around here a lot of the local BP stations (maybe a dozen) were once owned by a local businessman. During the dot.com mania he sunk a lot of his money into that, lost his shirt and ended up having to close all of these stations. Over the course of the next year or two they re-opened as he found buyers for them. The one closest to me closed for about 18 months, then reopened for several years, but had lost a lot of customers in the interim (including me) and so was never quite as profitable as before. Now it's closed again - demolished, actually, as someone decided that the piece of land it was on was more valuable if used for other purposes. But then that kind of stalled out, too, so now there's just an empty field there and it may stay that way indefinitely.

There are other BP stations around here, I'm sure, but right off the top of my head I couldn't tell you where they are. Until the mess in the Gulf is cleaned up, nobody wants the letters "BP" on their station right now, anyway.

As aleady noted, your local Exxon/Mobil stations may be going through a similar ownership crisis.

And you know this how??

Read BEYOND the header, I was asking about the stations on LONG ISLAND, specifically...

Then you should have asked "Why are all the Exxon/Mobil stations on LONG ISLAND closing?"

Where I live there is a Mobil, Shell, and Gulf next door to each other. Shell and Gulf are always the same, and Mobile is ALWAYS 30 cents more per gallon. I don't know much about gasoline but I doubt there is much of a difference between Shell and Mobil. Still there are always idiots who are filling at Mobil anyways. Maybe that has something to do with it.

We have 2 Exxon stations in town, 1/2 mile apart from each other. They're both still open.

we have maybe one Exxon nearby, everything else seems to be a Wawa, lol.

ExxonMobil announced they were shedding their retail operations 2 years ago. They were spinning that the buyers would enter into branding deals that would keep the EM name, but it seems that isn't quite how it played out. Various purchasers have been dropping the name (Circle K in the southwest comes to mind). I would venture a guess that that is what's happening on LI.

Mobile around here was bought out by Lukeoil. Every station. Our Exxons are still here though.....

It might be part of a long term strategy for XOM to to divest itself of retail and distribution channels to focus on their core business (refining).

There haven't been any Mobil retailers closing shop locally, though all the Exxon locations in NY are gone (that a term of the merger deal); many of those are Shell or Lukoil retailers today. The Mobil oil terminal near here in Newburgh was sold to Global Terminals, yet XOM Fuels Marketing still picks up product with Mobil logo tankers and delivers to retailers.

lol @ all the non new yorkers posting about new york.

Same thing here. Except, I've recently seen a few former Mobil stations that are now Exxon.

Mobile are selling all of their gas station. So depending who buys them either stays with mobile or jump to another brand.

I think you meant to say 'old' stations are closing.

The economy sucks.
What can you do?

-Tzale

Something tells me the thread subject caught their attention on the hot topic ticker on top of the forums.

-Tzale

Interesting. That would explain why I haven't seen an Exxon in years around here. I haven't noticed Mobil closing recently, but the closest one to me charges an absurd amount (like someone above posted), though they are 24/7. I seriously don't understand why people fill up there unless it's a near emergency.

I don't buy gas at Exxon, but I almost always use the ladies' room in one station when I pass it. It's USUALLY clean.

Possibly several reasons:

1) Higher fuel mileage of vehicles equates to lower fuel demand at individual stations. Two stations in an area might be sufficient to service the demand which previously took three stations to fulfill. Similarly, the closure of a major factory/business in the neighborhood can permanently affect the 'natural' flow of traffic to an individual station.

2) Better use of the land - maybe the landowner (often different than the station operator) can get a higher rate-of-return by building something different on the land. Or perhaps simply selling the land at a profit to a developer.

3) Station operator experiencing squeezed operating margins due to a variety of factors - oil company pricing, insurance, taxes, lower traffic. (also see #1 above).

4) The storage tanks in the ground may be on the verge of their economic/physical lifespan. Tearing down the station and digging out the tanks before they leak (with that scenario's environmental remediation costs) is a lot cheaper than rebuilding - especially in the face of falling consumption at a given location.

I noticed a lot of exxon / mobile stations changing brands but many more stations around queens were closed, torn down, and replaced by banks, or walgreens, or something else.

exxon has closed a couple of stations in NJ

Same here.

Hey, anyone else notice how S L O W their pumps are?? I mean, I can piss more per minute than what comes out the nozzle.
(case in point, I went to a nearby Wawa, saved $0.09/gallon over nearby Exxon and filled the tank in half the time (10.3gals of 12gal tank over 4 week period)

my Uncle owned a Shell station for 20 years off the LIE.
unless you run a garage mechanic, or food concession,
you make little on the gas pumped because the margins
between what you pay, and what you can charge are thin.
with so many chain mechanics and dealers, and so many
7/11'like store chains, there's little left to make any profit,
once you done with all the taxes, business fees, insurance.
when my Uncle retired, he offered the business to his kids
and none of them wanted it once they knew the realities.

     As someone else so aptly noted, I'm amongst those who discovered this thread because it was featured along the top.

     As for gas stations, I'm not claiming to be an expert since I've never operated such a business, but I've heard that the margin on a gallon of gasoline is often $.01 per gallon.  I'm not sure if that's gross, or net.  Even if it's net, that's not a lot, particularly since no gas station I've seen can sell enough gallons each day for that to add up to a nice profit.  So basically, the real money is made when people buy something in the convenience store, or whatever the business happens to be.

While I have no actual numbers either, I find those numbers hard to swallow. I would be willing to accept that they make MORE profit with all the "convenience" items they also sell, but to say that gross/net profit is only one cent a gallon, sounds too low to be realistic...

According to ABC News, they make less than a nickel per gallon. Often times, it is 1-2 cents, particularly when credit cards are used.

»money.cnn.com/2008/03/13 ··· 08031404

Most service stations are independently owned and operated and take in between 7 and 10 cents for every gallon they sell, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

»www.smartmoney.com/spend ··· u-19750/

Smart Money puts it betwen 10 & 15 cents a gallon

»www.businessnation.com/B ··· ale.html

has some stations that are for sale and some are claiming to be somewhat profitable.