[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by mazeroni

Hey! I lived in Matthews until August before moving to Nashville. Nice area. I always went to the Exxon on the corner of Mint Hill Road and and 74 south, just before the interstate, and the Exxon on E Independence at the corner of Unionville - Indian Trail Road. Never had any complaints and now I always use Exxon stations - the bigger ones in high traffic areas.

I really don't trust the smaller stations.

I can't image a large conglomerate like Shell or Exxon wouldn't have strict systems in place to ensure only their branded gas is being sold at stations with their name. But....

The smaller ones? Dunno.

The margin on gasoline for the station owner is like $.01 per gallon, so possibly there are stations that do this, at least to a small degree. A station holds 6,000 gallons of fuel, or somewhere around there, right? If you dilute a few hundred gallons, that would be a lot more profit, and considering modern cars have fuel systems that will compensate to a degree to the kind of gas in tank, well, who would ever know.

Maybe someone didn't know the station tank hadn't been filled, or they were waiting for a delivery and went ahead and put water in. Maybe you just got there at the wrong time.

Don't want to fuel the conspiracy though.

So you put 200 gallons of water in to make an additional $2 and risk damaging your $10,000 equipment? Stations adding water to stretch fuel is an urban legend. Yes, a small station stands a larger risk of having water but that is a result of less product turn over and shoddy maintenance practices not some weird ass scam.