FlashingBlade

I am obviously late in this discussion...

I get my gas at Costco and follow it up with the occasional Techron (not ProGard) treatment.

In case you wonder what the difference is with the gas at other nearby stations, I have a picture of the same truck that delivers to Costco, delivering to Chevron. Gas companies often share resources locally to lower transportation costs, though the additives may differ a bit. I have not had good luck with Arco gas probably because it has a higher concentration of Ethanol. Consumer Report also had an article on it a while back, FWIW.

Wellardmac

Additionally, here in the Northeast region Exxon Mobil sold their Mobil service stations to Lukoil, but continued to allow them to operate under the Mobil name for 1 year. The result is that they were selling Lukoil gas under the Mobil brand... chances of that gas coming from a Mobil tank were pretty low.

rcg412

Oreganet - i noticed our car runs great on the lukoil gas... love it actually. Used to love mobil, but a las they are no more. Sunoco sucks.

Wellardmac

Interesting. I've only occasionally used them. In my area they're usually the highest priced gas stations, but that's probably all driven by their location... lots of them in good locations.

10 GT3

I don't really want to go into all the mis-information that is in this thread. I work in this industry on in downstream and I wouldn't put a lot into the comments here. Only the majors can supply. Even if you go to a wholesale like Costco, Sams or Racetrack, they are buying their supply from Shell, BP, Texaco/Chevron or Exxon/Mobile. Contracts with suppliers are normally on yearly negotiations. Valero/Diamond Shamrock, which is not a major, is the only small provider that has its own refinery (just a single one) that supplies their own operations, but they also buy product from other majors. Upstream and downstream are completely separate operations for the majors and run as separate corporate entities.

When supply is short, even the majors will buy from each other. Last year after the hurricanes, many of you were actually pumping Exxon supply out of Shell stations and vice versa. There was a constant amount of trading for many weeks, so a single stations could have been pumping from 4 different supply sources in a month. I can't tell you who has the freshest supply, buy I can say who gets priority. Branded stations always come first before unbranded and wholesalers.

BTW, most the time when you have a problem with a gas; it isn't the brand. It is moisture contamination in the storage tanks.

GoodSpeed Sweden

I use Shell 99 Octane (Europe)

Einstein

i use Sam's, so far no probs w/any of my cars.