PG

And Optimax....and fuel in general is still the price it is !!
I know its taxed to **** but even still !

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Ah yes, but they don't make any profit on fuel, don't you know?

Sh*t, that pig that's just flown over has crapped on the fairies at the bottom of my garden

Alcazar

Dream Weaver

Very annoying

Dracoro

Per litre they don't make much on fuel. However, anyone here with a vague understanding of economies of scale can work out that the sheer number of litres they sell makes them lots of money.

IWatkins

gsm1

Isn't it the case that they keep the refining operation as a separate company, where they make all the money, and then sell on claiming only a small margin is added to the fuel price?

Belmondo

£104 million a day! (Just form car / road use)

At least Shell are honest about it!

imlach

...and why should corporations not make a healthy profit? That's what they are in business for. They're not charities

No-one is forcing you to buy vast amounts of fuel.

Dream Weaver

Nothing wrong with making money, but to then reckon they only make 1p per litre, and give the impression they are "hard up" is just plain wrong.

Kevin Groat

Try working out how much the government make from the duty then - at least Shell actually do some work for their money...

imlach

Don't think they are complaining of being hard up.......

So if you were recruited as the CEO of Shell, you'd set out to lower the profits then? How long do you think it'd be before the shareholders voted you out?

That's business. Everyone wants to maximise profit, and lower costs.

As I said, if you want charity, buy your fuel from Oxfam.

imlach

PS No-one seems to mind Microsoft making similar profits? Why?

Jap2Scrap

Be fair guys. They could knock 20% off their profit at the pump and we wouldn't notice it. There's more difference than that between an average two filling stations.

Dream Weaver

Because Bill Gates never moans about only making 1p per software sold

All the petrol companies go on about upping fuel by 2p a litre because "crude oil prices have shot up".

If they are making £24m a day, why do they have to charge so much for fuel.

imlach

...because everyone keeps buying their products
Vote with your feet (literally!).

Buckrogers

Shell and co do a little bit more then just selling petrol....

"HDPE" is a by product of refining oil. Used to make plastic milk bottles and the like.
When I was working for a big plastic container manufacturing company they made around 1.5 million milk bottles a day, at one plant. HDPE was around £700 per tonne. Each tanker held about 30 to 40 tons and they had around 8 tankers delivered a day....

Every time you buy a pint of milk, you have just added to BP, Shell and co's profits...

Chip

A tanker carrying a load of 40 tons. I dont think so.
Chip

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Where did you get that idea?

At least Shell has fair and healthy competition, I know who I'd rather see making their millions.

imlach

I get fed up with the Microsoft bashers at work, let alone on here.....

Operating Systems for PCs is an open market. It's not Microsoft's fault that the majority of major corporations don't have the wherewithall to move away from Microsoft products.

I personally don't see a problem with Microsoft products. They seem to work well enough in an office environment (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Visio, etc). Of course there are other open source & competitive products available that do the job just as well, but when the majority of businesses stick with the MS products, why change?

Please enlighten me as to why people are forced into buying or using MS products?

...or is it just the usual "trendy to bash Microsoft" rubbish....

PS I am writing this on Safari running on a Mac running OS X 10.3 so I have no conflict of interest

pslewis

I'm with imlach .... market forces at work, nowt wrong with that ..... buy Sainsburys SUL if you want high octane at 75p/litre!!

Pete

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Imagine that 95% of the filling stations in the UK only sold petrol. Whatever the virtues of a diesel car - torque and economy - actually buying one would carry with it the burden of not simply being able to drive from A to B like everyone else, because you'd be constantly planning journeys around availability of fuel.

Once something - however good or bad - gets entrenched into the market, moving away carries a huge penalty in terms of cost, effort and utility, even if ultimately everyone would be better off after the switch. Sticking with the established standard represents a local maximum in terms of payoff/cost.

I'm sure also that it's no coincidence, that my Pocket PC running a Windows derivative keeps needing to be reset, but my old Psion 5MX never did. Unfortunately the Psion can't do sat nav. See the problem?

imlach

Yes, but it's hardly the fault of Microsoft that the competition didn't mount a significant challenge. It all moved so fast, so quick, before anyone could do anything about it. However, they should now be nobbled as a company because of their success?

OSX & Linux now provide a credible workstation alternative, yet corporations are happy to stick with MS. However, Linux & other embedded OS's like Windriver's VxWorks are now heavily used in embedded products, so it's not ALL bad.

I'm still failing to see your big problem with Microsoft's success as a business.

imlach

...the point being, the Psion could NEVER do satnav - so to speculate on how well it could run is hearsay

Psion's OS was available to be liecensed IIRC. However, the major manufacturers of PDAs chose MS and/or Palm's OS. Their choice, for whatever reasons. They DID have a choice!