Panic Buying Idiots

[Gibbo2286]

Still no fuel at my local Tesco, asked online it says the forecourt's open but it ain't, asked at the service desk when will they get it, "Sorry we've no idea but it's due."

Me, "It said on the website the forecourt's open but there's barriers all across"

Service lady. "It is open, you can go in and buy sweets and tobacco."

[Dormouse]

About the "fuel in the wheelie bin" article, I think it was someone using an animal feed bin not a proper wheelie bin if my memory serves me well. But, regardless of what kind of bin was or wasn't used it is a demonstration of what people perceive as what happens in situations like this.

One of my wife's nursing chums couldn't get fuel to get to work the other day and the Health Board had to send a taxi out to get her on shift. The knock on effects of this "crisis" affect us all one way or another. The friend did manage to get some fuel the next day (but not a full tank) so was able to get on shift after that. All for the want of what precisely?

[Hell Razor5543]

I do a lot of mileage (36,000 since June 2020), and I do fill up the van quite often. However, I will only do so normally when I have less than half a tank of fuel (the exception is when I KNOW I have a lot of driving that day, and will then fill up the van regardless). I had to fill up three times last week, but my timing was fortuitous; there were no queues (mind you, I collect my stock from a ByBox that is on a petrol station site, which helps)! Every day I have been working I have seen almost every petrol station with massive queues or without any fuel (the exception was a petrol station closed for refurbishment). At 08:30 on Sunday the Sainsbury petrol station (next to where my call was) had a queue over 25 vehicles long, and when I left the call at 10:30 they had run out of fuel.

[Paul-R]

https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threa ... 5/page-175

Frankly, I don't believe the post. Although filling a wheelie bin from smaller cans makes the story more believable I haven't ever seen a wheelie made from a dissolvable plastic.

[Paul-R]

Clear signs needed:
1. This station requires payment before filling..

That would certainly do it. Although how much would you know to pay for beforehand? Would you get change back if you underfill though? Assuming you pay by cash.

Clear signs needed:
2. Minimum fuel purchase £30.

There are usually signs for minimum signs saying minimum amount of 5 litres already and I have been known to just put a couple of litres in to top up so that I could get an accurate fuel consumption figure.

[Dormouse]

I thought our local Shell station was taking the mince when I saw it charging 145p/l for diesel but, after doing a quick check on petrol stations in the midlands around my daughter's I was surprised how cheap our Sainsburys still is for fuel and no queues. I really do despair when such clear pricing differences exist across the UK without any real obvious reason.

[moizeau]

I paid 1,34 for diesel a fortnight ago in Morrisons, Burntwood. And yes, completely agree with you Dormouse, there are are muppets in all walks of life, age, gender, profession, religion, hoping the sane can educate, but with the press......not putting much on the bet.

[Nickcc102]

Can’t say I’m really bothered by the antics of the stupid, you’ll never change human nature so just look back with indifference

[GiveMeABreak]

I took the courtesy car back to the dealer this late afternoon, and picked up the Aircross - I managed to get some unleaded petrol for the C4 2 days ago, but no diesel. So although I had 3/4 tank of diesel on picking the Aircross up, I wanted to top it up (as we only have 1 garage locally and that was looking a bit grim the other day), but no diesel at Morrisons or Tesco, but I did manage to get some form an independent in town, so popped in £16! That's all I could get in - but that will do us for the next few weeks.

Glad to say no idiots filling plastic bottles with fuel in front of me....

[white exec]

Moderator note
A few posts deleted here today - Language getting intemperate and over-personal.

[Gibbo2286]

My local Tesco back to nearly normal this morning, a bit crowded but not too much, they had a couple of floor managers out directing the customers to the right pumps, limits, had my usual £50 worth, a good job because my gauge was telling me 19 miles left..

[GiveMeABreak]

I should of clarified some of my earlier comments - I put half a tank of petrol in the courtesy car as I'm good like that and don't like to return it empty (as a lot of people do) and leave the next person running on fumes before they can get some fuel - especially now.

Secondly, topping up my own car with diesel is simply because it has a relatively small tank and we are in a very rural area with only 1 petrol station 5 miles away that was already out of diesel the previous day.

I don't class that as panic buying, but normal behaviour which will see us through for a few weeks, with several vet visits for our animals and getting shopping for the elderly neighbours...

[admiral51]

This issue has made me smile and snarl in not quite equal measures but have done a little bit of calculation based on what has been reported both in written press and on the old goggle box.

#The Uk has approx 30 million cars/vans registered on the road
#The average fuel tank capacity is 60 litres
# if every vehicle had half a tank full and filled up they would put in on average 30 litres.

The above has been stated in various sources so on to the next bit.....

The capacity of a standard HGV fuel tanker is somewhere between 24k and 27k litres depending on whether single type fuel or a mix of grades and if doing rural or town/city deliveries.
So if we take the average as 25k litres the figures are quite astonishing.

If we take the cars/vans registered as half the quoted figure so 15 million vehicles.
Halve the tank capacity from 30 litres and hence the half fill up would be 15 litres.

Now if every vehicle did the above the fuel dispensed would be 15 million x 15 litres = 225 million litres over say a 4 day period.

So 225 million litres divided by 25k litres per tanker = 9k tankers worth of fuel

So if 1 tanker refuels a forecourt with 25k litres of fuel then it will only take 1660 vehicles to run it dry if they only use 15 litres per fill, if they use 30 litres per fill its 833, 45 litres =555

If we accept quoted figures of 3k-3.5k tanker drivers in the uk and take the lower 3k figure and ignore logistics and drivers hours etc then in an ideal world with no one buying any fuel then in 3 days each fuel court would have 25k litres of fuel but unless we as consumers take a step back then its going to be a knock on effect for the next 3 - 4 weeks at the very least.

Just my tuppence worth

Colin

[Dormouse]

Not a bad tuppence worth. Using these figures it is easy to see how sharp changes in buying habits affects Bank Holidays, Christmas and the like. But sustained over purchasing as we see just now could easily take weeks to fully resolve as it will take a lot of juggling the logistic rotas just to meet normal holiday demands never mind the ongoing demand we see just now. It is normally all about getting fuel to where it is planned for not the knee jerk, scatter gun effects we are seeing at the moment.

[bobins]

The daft thing about all this is that there were many petrol stations dealing with intermittent supplies in the week leading up to when the press got hold of the story, but life went on and people just went to the next petrol station and filled up with their fuel as normal.