Did it ever happen to you? Walked into a busy gas station to fill up your car, saw a line of cars waiting to fill up their own tanks right behind you, the store inside full of people, you look up at the high high gas prices and you say to yourself....
Man it would be nice to own one of these suckers... I wonder how much it cost to buy one of these?
I confess - I had envy in my heart couple of times too when walked into busy gas stations in Metro Detroit towns, wondering how much were these guys pulling in every month?
I mean when you look at how much money the big guys - Exxon, B.P., Shell - are making - you gotta assume that owning a gas station got to be a sure fire bet. No matter what happens - people need to fill up the gas tanks. There always will be a need for this.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
There are right now, 92 gas stations in foreclosure just in the Metro Detroit area. You actually lose money. Yes that is not a typo- you actually lose money on every gallon of gas you sell after you take the credit card processing charges out.
Your only hope of making money is to lure the customer into the store and sell them pop, chips, candy, cigarettes and lotto tickets - that is were the money is.
Now does it makes sense to you why so many gas stations and especially all the new ones kind look like small supermarkets with really nice interiors and store layouts?
Owning a gas station means in Michigan right now; working 50-60 hours a week, standing up on your feet, putting a mortgage / business loan on your head that you personally guarantee for anywhere between one million to two million dollars and check this out....
After you have sold a million bucks worth of gas and chips - you will be lucky to take home $60,000 per year before taxes.
Turns out that my envy was misplaced.
Because if this is what it takes to pull $5,000 per month - working from sunrise to sunset, stuck in a store, doing the same thing overand over again, signing my life away in a debt note - heck; I can wholesale flip a house and get the same check - month after month in Michigan.
My brother in law owns a gas station; my next-door neighbor who is a very good friend of mine owns a gas station - these numbers are fact of life for them.
I know another gas station owner who actually owns 12 of them in Metro Detroit - his employees steal around $50,000 worth of gas and supplies every single month.
Once in a while I want to have a "real business" - you know have a place with a sign in front of it with my name; have dozen of employees; have staff; have bunch of people running around; and then I see the "reality" of these big businesses and I am happy that I have a business where I can flip one house and get a check, which is better and bigger than owning four gas stations in Michigan.
I was wrong to envy these gas station owners.
They should envy us.
