Tennessee - Temporarily Out of Gas???????

[MsBHaven]

I just returned from a trip that took me to Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. I had no problem finding diesel and the price was under $4.00. When I hit the Kentucky/Tennessee state line yesterday I was amazed at what was going on at the Flying J. Every island was backed up with cars and RV's lined up out onto the road. As I entered TN, I saw several gas stations without gas and the ones that had gas had lines out onto the street. As I reached my town, the same thing was going on and those that had gas were around $4.25 for unleaded.

The news says that this should improve in a few days. I have heard two stories - 1) TN people thought there would be a gas crisis due to Ike, so they rushed out and bought up the gas; 2) There really is a shortage because our gas comes from the Houston area. I also heard that the gas station owners put bags on the pumps early, but they weren't really out of gas - they just wanted to hold on to the cheaper gas they had so they could charge higher prices after the hurricane.

[Sunseeker]

Margie, I sure hope station owners didn't put "out of gas" signs up early. There's a big, stiff penalty if someone was to prove that one!! I hope they get creamed if that's the truth.

[avalen]

wow, both stories could be true or not. Our gas has gone down, I paid 3.35 this morning
and thats the cheapest its been for along time. Our gas comes from Tucson but don't
know where it comes from before that. Hope you don't get stranded for long.

[Echo]

Hey Margie, both stories have some truth to them. They had some blurb on TV about a possible gas shortage because of Ike and that did it. Holy smokes the freaking people went spaz. There were hour long waits at the gas pumps last Friday. Here in Johnson City there are quite a few stations out of regular unleaded. I heard that a couple of stations here put it out that gas was $5.95 per gal. Have so idea exactly how true that little ditty was. I know that the 'stuff' hit the fan because prices were going up while people were waiting in line. So there are some investigations going on for gouging.

The prices here for unleaded plus are about $3.88 here. If any stations put out signs or shut off the pumps to wait for higher prices I hope they get there azz's burned big time. I hate crooked anything or anyone.

A lot of people are like sheep. One little hint of ? and the whole flock run in fear. It's like when they predict an inch of snow. People panic and wipe grocery stores of bread, milk and eggs. Oh candles and small propane tanks too. sheesh

[Bethers]

Ah, I think it's all a bunch of baloney. Alabama also had the rediculously high prices and my friend there sent me a map of the US showing the gas prices by county in the entire country, and there was one belt from Michigan down to Alabama that had the rediculous prices. No one else came close to what happened in that long, fairly narrow belt with prices. And with those prices came the scares, etc. And the stations running out of gas. Someone (I'm guessing some middleman) is making a good deal of money.

Yes, prices went up everywhere when Ike was shown going near the oil rigs - on the speculation that there could be a problem.

Funny thing - the prices went up very little here in TX. Yes, they did run out of gas at stations in the hard hit areas, but not the rest of the state - and those were hard for the tankers to get to to fill up.

The governors in many states are looking to see if there was price gouging going on. The unfortunate thing is they belive (as I do) there was, but it's hard to prove it.

[Gentleladybear]

Florida was also given this hype about Ike and the gas prices. Lines were everywhere people were filling up. It was said that the price would go up to 5 to 6 bucks a gallon by the following week. There were signs on the pumps that due to Ike and gas shortage we were limited to 10 gallons. WELL it all turned out to be a lie that the gas companies, mainly Kangaroo had started. Florida's gas according to our governor doesn't even come from Texas. They are now taking complaints and prosecuting the gas stations that did price gouging during this time. The prices here are frozen at 3.89 a gallon by the stations even though oil went down 3.00 a barrel and the prices should be dropping.

It seems to me somebody is manipulating this gas situation and we are all paying the price for it. But this was all a panic situation created to make people rush out and buy gas, remember we had all slowed down in buying gas and this pushed us all to buy.