No more gas...

[joshnosh]

So it seems I can no longer run on gas

Used to fill up at work where there where 2 petrol stations on route. And 1 just off route.

There's also a station about 5 mins from home.

Iv now got a new job and there's no where to fill there. Desperately been searching for a little hidden place but no luck.

So I'll have to fill up at my local one which isn't ideal but hey. So I go to fill up. Nice little hand written paper sign saying they have permenatly discontinued lpg.


Great!

[LairdScooby]

Fairly sure you've heard of this site but if you haven't it may reveal one you don't know about fairly locally or one that is near enough to make the drive worthwhile.

http://filllpg.co.uk/index.php?page=home.php

My nearest 2 stations are at least 12 miles away but i make sure if i'm going somewhere i take a minor detour to reach them - alternatively i find the next nearest on my way to where i'm going and fill up there.

Hope that's helpful for you, if you do use it already perhaps you could update the one that no longer has LPG so nobody else gets stuck?

[joshnosh]

I'm going to try contact them and perswade them not to discontinue it. Probably wount work but worth a try.

It's just annoying/funny
I drive all a cross the UK. Across loads off Europe.
Never even have to look up the gas stations. I just see them on route.

But I can't get any where I live lol.


Yeah a tank off gas should last me 2 weeks now as my jorneys are shorter. If I just make sure I get gas when I go sewhere I should be able to use it a lot off the time

[LairdScooby]

Not being negative but it sounds like they've already discontinued it - their loss as i'm sure you'll find somewhere else to fill up.

Where i've been using the two that are now most local to me (one is 12, the other is 22 miles from me), the staff are now recognising me as a regular and it's pretty obvious i only go there for the gas. Hopefully as LPG picks up with more popularity that will take the decision out of their hands to keep it so i'm hoping they'll have it for a good time to come.

Best of it all is they are both at least 12p/L cheaper than the other one i used to use that (being a BP) will no doubt be losing it's LPG pump at some point.

[LPGC]

If one station is much cheaper than others within a certain range it will likely attract most of the custom within that range, while that range will be greater the bigger the difference in prices... just market forces. The only downside then is that some of those that were more expensive will close down due to lack of custom and then there'll be talk of lack of availability especially among those that live and commute around the outskirts of the range.

Where I see some of the more expensive prices I wonder if management have only thought as far as 'still much cheaper than petrol, punters will still go for it rather than drive a few miles down the road to where it is 10p cheaper'. But most of us would drive down the road even if a bit less convenient.. a 10p p/l higher price in the eyes of an LPG customer might equate to nearly a 20% higher price...

My message to forecourts, especially the usual type which sells LPG as a sideline to petrol, would be to imagine how much petrol they would sell if they priced it 20% higher than a station just a few miles away and then to apply the same business sense when setting LPG prices as they do when setting petrol prices. 5 Pence per litre could make all the difference between selling a great deal of LPG or selling none at all and then removing pumps due to 'lack of demand'. In many towns places that sell only LPG are springing up, they usually set very cheap prices and sell a lot of LPG.. If garages just a few miles away from such places sold LPG at just a few pence above those places they'd still sell a lot of it... A lot of those that close down may have managers with the 'much cheaper than petrol yet still there isn't enough demand' mentality.

Simon

[santer]

Not current

[Gilbertd]

That one is so out of date and inaccurate as to be a complete waste of time. I've just checked my local area and found it doesn't list at least 3 stations, it lists two that haven't been there for years (one closed down 8 years ago but is still shown) and not one of those shown on the map is in the correct place. At least Richard's site (www.filllpg.co.uk) is accurate and up to date as it is updated by the users.

[santer]

Apologies

[Brian_H]

I'm going to try contact them and perswade them not to discontinue it. Probably wount work but worth a try.

It's just annoying/funny
I drive all a cross the UK. Across loads off Europe.
Never even have to look up the gas stations. I just see them on route.

But I can't get any where I live lol.


Yeah a tank off gas should last me 2 weeks now as my jorneys are shorter. If I just make sure I get gas when I go sewhere I should be able to use it a lot off the time

If its a BP station you've probably got no hope of them maintaining it - they have pulled pretty much every one of their own company operated stations (all the ones with the M&S simply food offerings). Theres very few left in the south side of London within the m25 due to this now.

Without knowing where you are its hard to say, but there are areas where its few and far between - Several of the ones on filllpg that have come up as unavailable recently are down to this (several others have had pumps removed completely - one of the local 4 stations went where I live last year, theres still 3 others left though).

[joshnosh]

is it me or have BP stopped doing gas everywhere?

[rich r]

Still 53.9p at the BP near York, and still busy. Quite often see camper vans and Range Rovers filling up there. More expensive than the 49.7 at Asda on the other side of town, but probably more people go past the BP.

As said before, it's only the BP owned ones that are stopping. The franchised ones are left to decide what they want to sell and at what price, but use the BP signage.

[Morat]

Still 53.9p at the BP near York, and still busy. Quite often see camper vans and Range Rovers filling up there. More expensive than the 49.7 at Asda on the other side of town, but probably more people go past the BP.

As said before, it's only the BP owned ones that are stopping. The franchised ones are left to decide what they want to sell and at what price, but use the BP signage.

The guys at Bilborough services run a discount scheme. You get 1p off per litre every time you buy 30 litres or more. There are IIRC 10 stamps on the card so your last fill can be quite good value - especially if you happen to need some oil. They'll generally give you two cards stamped up to the last stamp with a bottle of oil...

[rich r]

That's quite a nice idea. I have to admit I don't go there often as I work at Monks Cross, so Asda's way more convenient (and cheaper).

The independent in Selby dropped their LPG price in the week before Christmas to 49.9p, although they put it up again in January. I suspect they got a bit more business over that period as a result.

[camaro]

I might suggest that to my local (Bangor Fuels) depot - seems like it would draw a lot more custom, as they are in the middle of an industrial estate and are mainly known for home heating oil - I think they deliver LPG to home heating tanks as well, but can't say I've ever seen any tankers badged up as "Bangor Fuels" on the road - maybe they franchise it out to someone else.

[Brian_H]

Still 53.9p at the BP near York, and still busy. Quite often see camper vans and Range Rovers filling up there. More expensive than the 49.7 at Asda on the other side of town, but probably more people go past the BP.

As said before, it's only the BP owned ones that are stopping. The franchised ones are left to decide what they want to sell and at what price, but use the BP signage.

The guys at Bilborough services run a discount scheme. You get 1p off per litre every time you buy 30 litres or more. There are IIRC 10 stamps on the card so your last fill can be quite good value - especially if you happen to need some oil. They'll generally give you two cards stamped up to the last stamp with a bottle of oil...

Thats one of the Malthurst franchise stations - Those are supplied by flogas so nothing to do with BP autogas at all.

I've seen about 5 more BP stations this month that still have their pumps, but are now permanently out of use - either the hoses removed, or out of service signs on them (cable tied in place so fairly permanent). Thats without the few i drive past regularly that have lost theirs.

Though incidentally all the ones in this state are the ones I'd usually drive past rather than use due to the price, And i'd suspect I'm not the only one doing so hence their problem with selling any in the first place.

[Morat]

Correct, they're flogas but with BP signage.

[Motorvating]

I live in the Hinckley area and have seen two providers cease LPG due to costs. Both state the demand for LPG has decreased so its no longer stocking it. I suppose with the cost of petrol and diesel at a historic low the demand for conversions must have declined.

[LPGC]

I live in the Hinckley area and have seen two providers cease LPG due to costs. Both state the demand for LPG has decreased so its no longer stocking it. I suppose with the cost of petrol and diesel at a historic low the demand for conversions must have declined.

It could equally be that demand for those two providers seemed to decline due to another provider in the area undercutting their prices!(?).

Fuel prices these days: https://www.petrolprices.com
Average price of both petrol and diesel are more than double the average price of LPG, this has been the case most of the time I've been involved in converting vehicles (over 10 ten years), though in some of those years LPG has been slightly above half the price of petrol. Now look at the pricing trends over those years, the following web page only shows petrol prices but, as just said, LPG has been around half the price of petrol most of these years and half price can be used as a rule of thumb. https://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html

The last link shows fuel prices are now again around what they were at the back end of 2007 and start of 2008. Inflation and in theory pay rises (I know) will mean that in real terms fuel prices are now felt to be closer to what they were in mid 2007. In 2007/2008 LPG parts prices were more expensive than they are today, so the cost for a customer to convert back then was also more expensive. This implies that an LPG conversion today is more viable for customers than back then! Any perception that an LPG conversion isn't worth it these days 'because fuel is cheap anyway now' may only be due to people having become so used to paying the sky high prices they were paying in, say, 2012. 'Historic low prices' is only true of recent times, if we went back in time further (maybe further than 2007) the percentage of wages people paid to fuel their vehicles will have been lower on average than today. When I was 19 I had a relatively low paid job but nipping down Cornwall for the weekend in my 2L petrol Cortina at 100mph averaging 25mpg over the 800 mile round trip (32 gallons of petrol...) didn't eat up the biggest part of that week's wages. For somebody in a similar position today, even if they run a tiny little diesel hatchback and get 50mpg (so use 16 gallons of diesel), that would cost £60 in fuel, the same journey in the Cortina today would cost £120 in fuel. Fuel prices have gone up but cars have become more economical, if you want low fuel prices you need to run LPG.

These days I don't convert quite the same number of vehicles per year to LPG that I did back in 2007 but I do far more repairs on LPG conversions fitted elsewhere than I did back in 2007. There are many more installers converting vehicles to LPG than there were in 2007 and not all of them seem to do a good job (those repairs I do often involve sorting out newly fitted systems where the vehicle owner has got fed up of taking the vehicle back to the guy who fitted it for yet another unsuccessful attempt to sort out a problem, or having been eventually fobbed off by that installer).

If I do only half the number of conversions that I did back in 2007, and I assume other installers are doing a similar number of conversions to me (which seems to be the case) and there are more than twice the number of installers (which seems to be the case), then the total number of vehicles converted to LPG these days will be higher than in 2007, so demand for conversions would therefore have gone up. As implied above, the payback time for an LPG conversion will now be as short as ever (and not as long as in 2007), so we could expect LPG conversions to be more popular now than in 2007. If I am wrong and fewer LPG conversions are done these days than in 2007, this might be explained by people not being in a position to be able to spend money now to save money in the long run (even if that long run is a shorter run than in previous times) or might be explained by people's concerns of poor results (which might be due those new installers).

Engines have become more complicated and LPG systems have become more advanced but the general standard of install seems to have gone down. I look at it like this... Case of X vehicle which could be converted at a push with a set of components costing £500 but for better results should be fitted with components costing £600. I might take 3 days converting that vehicle using the £600 components, fully understanding what I'm doing and making sure everything is fitted in a technically correct way and done neatly, I might charge £1000 for this job and the customer is happy. Another installer might use the £500 components, not be as technically savvy or as experienced, might take a day to do the job, might not do as technically correct a job of installation, might not be as neat, and they might charge £800. A repair I do might involve sorting out the £800 conversion at some point after the owner has warned all his friends against an LPG conversion, and might involve me changing some component(s) on that install so the customer ends up paying more in total than then £1000 I would have charged if they'd only come to me in the first place. Even if that person had no problems with their £800 conversion so never visited me, they or their friends might be put off an LPG conversion by the standard of workmanship they see on the £800 conversion.

Simon

[rich r]

Out of interest what price were those two places near Hinckley charging for LPG? You tend to find the areas with lots of LPG pumps are also the areas where the price is lowest. So for example at the moment, the Birmingham area has loads selling below 50p a litre. Here in York area, there are around half a dozen places selling LPG, all below 55p, with a couple below 50p.

If their prices were high compared to other places that people would be driving to or from. For example - what are the prices in Leicester or Coventry? Places I imagine quite a lot of people who live in the Hinckley area might be driving to regularly for work or to do their shopping.

Hence if those two filling stations were asking 10p a litre more than people could get LPG for maybe near where they work, or where they shop, then there will indeed be little demand for it. The obvious thing is that if they dropped their price they might pull some of that trade away from the cities and then gradually increase it to a point where they're making a reasonable profit without driving people away. But there may be other factors involved such as difficulty with suppliers that mean they'd rather not sell it.

[Morat]

rich r
I don't know if you ever venture further North or East but the BATA stations (all three of them) run a 2p discount scheme. The one in Helmsley sells at 49.9 ppl anyway so 47.9 is now the lowest I can find nearby. Even if it's not really _that_ near I can top up as I go past. They have another outlet in Seamer on the A64.