$1.83 A LITRE: WHY SERVO HAS CHEAP FUEL
AFTER being moved by customers’ stories of not being able to afford school holiday outings due to cost of living pressures, a Tasmanian service station decided to lend a hand by selling unleaded at cost price.
Dawn Blyth, manager of the Ampol service station at Somerset, said she was “blown away” by the community’s response when she publicised on Friday she would be selling unleaded fuel for 183.9 cents a litre – “almost” cost price – until the end of school holidays.
“It’s been absolutely overwhelming, some people were travelling quite a distance (to fuel up),” Ms Blyth, a 14year veteran of the service station, said.
Despite taking an extra big delivery in preparation for the cheap deal, Ms Blyth said the service station had sold out of unleaded by Sunday morning.
“We were double, three times as busy,” she said.
Ms Blyth said she was moved to do something for the community after hearing how people were struggling financially at the moment and how that affected their ability to do fun things with their kids of the school holidays.
“We rely on our local community to support us so we decided we would like to give something back to them,” Ms Blyth said.
She said she “appreciated” her boss, the station’s owner, getting on board with the idea as well.
According to the Australian Institute of Petroleum, citing data from Motormouth, unleaded petrol cost an average of 212.4 cents a litre in Tasmania for the week ending on Sunday, with a weekly high of 219.5 cents a litre.
The fuel excise will return to 44 cents a litre on September 30.