I Tracked Gas Prices at 600 Costcos During the Strait of Hormuz Crisis
Tracking Costco gas prices
When gas prices spiked during the Strait of Hormuz crisis, a Tampa commuter built a scraper to track prices at every Costco in the US. By sweeping Costco's hidden APIs, he collected data from 600 warehouses, revealing 38,018 price changes in 154 days—with cuts outpacing hikes. The project, powered by TimescaleDB and Next.js, is now a live dashboard that lets anyone compare prices before choosing a warehouse.
A company that treats gas as a rounding error still has to move with the market… eventually.
- jopolous
I worked at Costco while in college many years ago and I got to see how the gas price was set for my specific warehouse.
Someone would drive out to a few neighboring gas stations, record prices, and set ours ~10 cents lower.
That’s it. That’s how the price was set.
Aside, working there was very good for a college job and I was treated very respectfully for the summers I was there.
- culi
GasBuddy is great for this. You can see average gas prices across all gas stations for a certain region (or nation-wide).
https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts
The data goes back even over 25 years if you play around with the query params (it started in June of 2000). E.g.
https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&...
- xp84
> "a Global Fuel Crisis"
Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05.
A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis."
I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda.
Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?
- 0cf8612b2e1e
Costco gas is famously a loss leader, typically running 15 to 20 cents below surrounding stations.
Is this true? I always assumed that Costco just had better deals/longer horizon commitments so it could undercut local stations. Maybe they even own a refinery just to maintain the best margin.
- esalman
Costco has a standalone gas station in Mission Viejo, CA - https://www.costco.com/w/-/gas-station/ca/mission-viejo/1772
I think this is the only one in US without a warehouse.
The prices are at least $0.40 cheaper than nearby gas stations.
- xnx
> Tracking Costco Gas Prices During a Global Fuel Crisis
10% more expensive than 5 years ago doesn't seem like a "crisis".
Diesel seems like more of a problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW
- phainopepla2
It's crazy to me that gas in Hawaii, 3k miles out into the Pacific, is cheaper than most of California.
- woeirua
It'd be way better if the clusters showed the average price for all the stations underneath each cluster. Then you could get a sense of prices nationally immediately.