A Good Year for the Outlaw

Here in Kewanee, we’ve just lost our “Murphy USA” gas station, located, like all Murphy stores, on Wal Mart property. At first, I thought it may have been a failure for Wal Mart, which would bring great joy to most of the world. But it turns out that Murphy, starting in May, has begun purchasing the land from Wal Mart for each of their stations, after having previously just leased space from the Uber-Giant-Evil-Empire Corporation. With that announcement came the corresponding notice that 47 Murphy USA stores would be closing. Kewanee turned out to be one of them.

But there’s a little side story here that must be mentioned. Kewanee has about 13,000 people. Approximately 4,000 of those people live South of Division Street (which is the line between Kewanee school district and the smaller Wethersfield school district). Off the top of my head, I can think of 7 places to get gasoline on the North side of Division Street (there are probably more), and just 2 on the South Side (of that I’m certain). That was including Murphy. Now, there is just ONE place to buy gas south of Division Street. In other words, if a person lives on the South end of Kewanee and wants to go to Peoria but has to gas up first, chances are they have to drive AWAY from Peoria to go get gas, then retrace their tracks to head back out of town on IL 78.

So why did Murphy close when they had such a great location? I contend that it wasn’t so much a “we hate Wal Mart” situation, because virtually everyone in town has to visit Wal Mart at some point…there aren’t that many other major retailers in town, but it was a situation where people had a specific reason for avoiding Murphy USA. No ethanol blend. That’s right, a filling station in the heart of corn country, in a city 35 miles from Moline, 30 miles from Galesburg, 40 miles from Peoria, and surrounded by farmland, Murphy USA chose NOT to sell an ethanol blend of any kind. Every other station in town has 10% Ethanol…we are still waiting for our first E85 pump. And those with the 10% blend are selling it cheaper than regular, non-blended fuel. Plus, the 10% blend comes at 89 octane, the regular gas is 87. But this Murphy outlet chose not to. I do not know if other Murphy’s sell E10, but I do know this: the chain FINALLY joined the NEVC – and pronounced they were “interested” in providing E85 fuel - in December of 2006.

 I have talked to people in Kewanee that have told me that is THE reason they avoid Murphy USA. While there are some who are still holding out on jumping on the Ethanol bandwagon (and those people are usually employees of an OPEC Oil Company or friends of George W. Bush or friends of Hugo Chavez – yes, that’s right, Chavez is against Ethanol – most of the world is embracing the possibility of using farm products to replace crude oil as our fuel of the future. And in farm country, the folks are most definitely in favor of our American farmers getting a fair price for their product, which Ethanol helps them acheive.

Meanwhile, Murphy’s first two E85 pumps were placed in South Bend, IN and in Missouri. There are now over 1,000 E85 pumps in the United States, over 100 in Illinois alone, but Murphy USA has two, although they had 950 stations at 950 Wal Marts (now going down by 47, leaving them with just over 900). Johnny Come Latelies to the party, I wonder when Toyota will join the fray?

That’s right, as of today, while you can buy an E85 Ford, GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Mercedes, Mazda, or Isuzu E85 vehicle, you cannot buy a Toyota equipped that way. Toyota, of course, is the Wal Mart of the automobile industry, the Evil Empire looking to rid the world of all other makes of vehicles. But that’s another story which I will tackle in another post.