¿Cómo ganan dinero las gasolineras si solo se quedan con unos 40 centavos por galón?

Gas in America costs about four dollars and thirty-five cents a gallon right now — and the station you buy it from keeps only a small slice of that. The price is more than a dollar higher than a year ago. But last year, the average station kept about forty cents on each gallon — before paying any of its own bills. Gasoline made up about two-thirds of what these stores sold, but only about thirty-nine percent of their gross profit. The real money is inside. And the oil brand on the sign out front? It usually doesn't own the place. More than half of the stores that sell gas in America belong to someone who owns just one store. Meanwhile, America's biggest convenience chain is owned by a Japanese company — and the number two chain, from Canada, once offered about forty-seven billion dollars to buy its parent. So where does your money go when you fill up? Let's follow the money.

Start with the gallon itself. The U.S. Energy Information Administration splits the price of every gallon into four parts. In twenty twenty-five, about fifty-one percent paid for crude oil. About fourteen percent covered refining. About seventeen percent was taxes. And about eighteen percent went to distribution and marketing — moving the fuel by pipeline and truck, and running the station. The federal gas tax is eighteen point four cents a gallon, and it hasn't been raised since nineteen ninety-three. States add their own — last year, from about nine cents a gallon in Alaska to about seventy-one cents in California. So when the pump price jumps, the jump usually starts with crude. This year, the conflict with Iran sent oil prices soaring — and in early October, U.S. crude was still trading around ninety dollars a barrel. The all-time record for regular gas is still five dollars and two cents, set in June twenty twenty-two. But this September averaged four dollars and thirty-three cents — the highest for any September on record. And on September twenty-second, diesel hit an all-time high of six dollars and fifty-three cents a gallon. Every truck that delivers to your store pays that too.

Now the station's slice. In twenty twenty-five, the average retailer's gross margin on gasoline was about forty cents a gallon — roughly thirteen percent of the price. That sounds like a lot, until you look at what it has to cover. The industry's trade group, NACS, estimates that selling fuel costs a retailer roughly twenty to twenty-five cents a gallon — including about eight cents in card fees. Margins have grown. Back in two thousand seven, the gross margin was about fourteen cents. But it's still a small slice of what you pay. And there's a pattern economists have a name for: rockets and feathers. When oil prices rise, pump prices tend to shoot up fast. When oil falls, they drift down slowly — and for a while, the station's margin gets wider. Government economists watched it happen in late twenty fourteen. In the last three months of that year, crude oil fell about thirty-six percent. Retail gasoline fell only about twenty-five percent. And a Bureau of Labor Statistics measure of retail fuel margins jumped forty-one percent, before easing back the next year. A St. Louis Fed illustration this summer found that even if oil went straight back to its prewar price, gas could take about six months to get within twenty-five cents of where it started.

So if gas doesn't pay the bills, what does? Walk inside. In twenty twenty-five, America's convenience stores sold three hundred forty-one billion dollars' worth of food and merchandise. Fuel brought in more money at the register — about sixty-five percent of all sales — but only about thirty-nine percent of the gross profit. The rest came from inside the store. And food is doing the heavy lifting. Prepared food and hot drinks — the coffee, the hot dogs, the sandwiches — were about twenty-nine percent of in-store sales, but almost thirty-nine percent of in-store gross profit. Look at Casey's — America's third-biggest convenience chain, with nearly three thousand stores, about half of them in towns of five thousand people or fewer. Bank of America ranks its pizza business fifth among U.S. pizza chains. And in fiscal twenty twenty-five, Casey's prepared food and drinks had an estimated gross margin of fifty-eight percent — compared with about twenty-three and a half percent for the company as a whole. That's why so many gas stations now look like restaurants with pumps outside. The pumps bring you in. The coffee, the pizza and the snacks pay the bills.

There's another business taking a cut of every gallon: the card networks and the banks behind them. In twenty twenty-five, convenience stores paid a record twenty-one point three billion dollars in credit and debit card fees — including four point six billion dollars in fees on the taxes they collect for the government. Card fees are charged as a percentage of the sale. So when gas prices go up, the fee on every gallon goes up with them, automatically. A merchants' coalition that lobbies against these fees estimated in May that, at about four dollars and forty-six cents a gallon, swipe fees worked out to roughly ten and a half cents on every gallon paid for with a credit card. Back in two thousand seven, the industry's total card fees were seven point six billion dollars.

So who actually owns the station? There are about one hundred fifty-two thousand convenience stores in America, and more than one hundred twenty-two thousand of them sell fuel. About fifty-five percent of those fuel-selling stores belong to someone who owns just one store. The big oil brand on the canopy is usually a supply deal, not an owner. Many small owners can't afford to build their own brand, so they sell a major's fuel and fly its flag — and drivers assume the oil company runs the place. Take Exxon. In two thousand eight, ExxonMobil said it would sell all the U.S. stations it still owned. Even then, about three quarters of its roughly twelve thousand U.S. stations were already owned by distributors. The Exxon and Mobil signs stayed up. ExxonMobil kept supplying the fuel — and getting paid for the brand. Not every gallon goes through a convenience store, either. Big-box stores like Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club and Kroger run almost seven thousand fuel sites, and a big forecourt like theirs can often sell about ten times the gallons of an average station. And some oil companies are coming back. Shell and Chevron own and operate stores again. And in twenty twenty-three, BP paid one point three billion dollars for TravelCenters of America — about two hundred eighty highway truck stops. BP had owned that same chain once before, and sold it in nineteen ninety-three.

At the top, though, the business is consolidating. America's biggest convenience chain is 7-Eleven, with about twelve thousand seven hundred U.S. stores. It started in nineteen twenty-seven as an ice house in Dallas. In nineteen ninety-one, the Japanese retailer Ito-Yokado bought seventy percent of its parent company, and since two thousand five, 7-Eleven has been fully Japanese-owned. In twenty twenty-one, it paid twenty-one billion dollars for Speedway — a chain of almost four thousand fuel stations, bought from the refiner Marathon Petroleum. The FTC said 7-Eleven closed the deal even though it knew the deal broke antitrust law — and required it to sell two hundred ninety-three stores across twenty states. Then came the Canadians. Alimentation Couche-Tard started with one store in Laval, Quebec, in nineteen eighty. It bought Circle K in two thousand three, and became America's number two chain — with nearly seventeen thousand stores worldwide. Then it went after 7-Eleven's parent, Seven and i Holdings, eventually offering about forty-seven billion dollars. In July twenty twenty-five, Couche-Tard walked away, saying there had been no "sincere or constructive engagement." This year, 7-Eleven said it expects to close six hundred forty-five North American stores, and it pushed back plans to take its North American business public.

And the whole model is under slow pressure. In twenty twenty-five, the number of gallons sold rose by just half a percent. Total transactions at convenience stores fell three percent, and trips inside the store fell almost two percent. Meanwhile, running a store got much more expensive. NACS says total store operating expenses are up more than twenty-three percent since twenty twenty-one. Wages and benefits went from about eighty thousand dollars per store, per month, to about one hundred four thousand over five years. Then there are electric cars. They're still only two to three percent of the vehicles on U.S. roads. But by January twenty twenty-six, the country had more than seventy-six thousand public charging locations — and nearly a quarter of all U.S. chargers are in California. A driver who charges at home never walks past the coffee machine. That's the real threat to this business: not cheaper gas, but fewer reasons to stop.

So who comes out ahead? When oil spikes, most of the extra money usually goes up the chain — to whoever sells the crude and refines it. The card networks and banks earn more on every gallon, automatically, just because the price went up. And the big chains have scale: in its fiscal year that ended in April twenty twenty-five, Couche-Tard's U.S. fuel margin averaged about forty-five cents a gallon. Who pays? Drivers, obviously. But also the small owner — the one-store operator with an oil company's sign on the canopy, paying rising card fees and rising wages out of a thin slice of every gallon. So a few things are worth knowing. The brand on the sign doesn't tell you who owns the station, or who sets its price. Prices can differ a lot between stations a mile apart, so check a price app before you fill up. If a station posts a lower cash price, that's the card fee you're not paying. And remember where the markup really is: not at the pump, but on the coffee, the snacks and the drinks inside.

Next time on Margin, we follow the money into a business that promises to save you money. If you want to understand how money actually moves before the headlines catch up, subscribe — and follow the money.