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July 20, 2012 Here's what you'll find in this edition: CLASSIFIEDS: FOR SALE! NEWS AROUND THE STATE TRAINING CLASS SCHEDULE MEET THE FOLKS AT LIBERTY GAS MEMBER BENEFIT PARTNER MESSAGE A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM BELLOMO FUELS POLITICAL PARTICIPATON: THE NJGCA PAC
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE: GREETINGS & SAL-UTATIONS! NATURAL GAS WORKSHOP E15 & DUMB TOBACCO LAWS Last Thursday NJGCA and our allies at the NJ Clean Cities Coalition held our long awaited workshop, “The Compelling Case for Natural Gas Vehicles.” I’m pleased to announce that it was a tremendous success! Approximately 170 people attended from all sectors of the industry, including fleet owners, local governments, gas companies, and of course several NJGCA members looking for more information about the possibility of adding natural gas to their product line. Several members who attended told me that the workshop was very informative, and answered some questions while raising others. I have to tell you, all of this has been a learning process for the both of us, and I’m pretty much telling you guys this stuff as I learn it. I myself learned a few new things from this seminar, as did the members of the NJGCA staff. Stephe Yborra from the Clean Vehicle Education Association gave a very informative overview of the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel, covering everything from market drivers to fuel station design, to calculating the long term savings from the installation.
The market for natural gas as a transportation fuel is exploding. More than half of all new garbage trucks being ordered in the US are now fueled by natural gas. In the last few years of the natural gas market we have seen the beginning of what is called “hockey stick growth”, where things go from several years of being level to an explosion upward. I have long been a proponent of natural gas because I’m in favor of anything that allows us to stop shipping billions of dollars of our nation’s wealth to a bunch of dictators in the Middle East. 88% of the natural gas we use comes from the United States, and the rest comes from Canada. The best part about natural gas is the price. After all the costs are factored in, you could be selling CNG for as low as $1.80-2.30 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE)! Even if you throw in a fat profit margin, you’ll still be $1-1.50 cheaper than your competitors’ price for gasoline. One of the best parts of natural gas is that in addition to being cheaper, the price is also much more stable than the price of gasoline. About 70% of the price of a gallon of gasoline is the cost of the petroleum, which means gas is heavily affected by every swing in the world oil market. The internal politics of countries on the other side of the globe can determine whether your business will have good times or bad. With natural gas, only 20% of the GGE is the cost of the fuel itself, the rest is the cost of compression, maintenance, and capital amortization. So if for some reason there is a huge increase in the cost of raw natural gas in the market, your business will not be severely affected. And don’t forget that most situations that would cause a jump in natural gas prices would also affect oil prices anyway. The last time the economy was fairly good was the first half of 2008. That spring saw huge increases in the price of oil, reaching $145 per barrel. Eventually, the world economy will get better and when it does the price of oil will likely start climbing up again. Combine that with the increasingly rapid modernization in India and China (which together hold one third of the world’s population) and the price for oil and therefore gasoline is only going up the next few years. Recently the Department of Energy announced that they would be providing funding to GE to help them design and build a new type of natural gas home refueling station that ideally will only cost $500 and cut down on the time it takes to refill. The point is to make it easy for motorists to refill their vehicles at home. If we are not quick to adapt then your business is going to get cut out of the market completely. Even though people may be able to do it at home, they still need to refill on the go. The gasoline industry is being attacked from all sides and ultimately we have no way to stop the attack. When the environment changes, we ultimately have to contend with nature’s law: adapt or die. Every car that fuels up with something other than gasoline is a car that won’t be stopping at your location; unless of course you sell whatever alternate fuel that car is filling up with. On Tuesday an event was put on by Environment New Jersey with help from the NJ Clean Cities Coalition to announce the release of a report detailing the role electric vehicles have and will play in reducing the use of gasoline in the market. You can read the full report by clicking HERE. The event was held at Nauna’s Bella Casa Ristorante in Montclair, where the owner recently installed two new electric charging stations for his customers to use. The owner, Tom Moloughney, has been driving electric vehicles for the last 3 years. In April he hosted a big electric car meet-up that we previously reported on. While a lot of electric car advocates tend to be liberal environmentalists, Tom comes at the issue from a different side of the argument. For him what’s important is using domestic energy instead of sending more and more of the nation’s wealth off to help balance the budgets of foreign countries. He said he believes that if the money stays in the USA, then eventually it gets spread around and makes its way back to his business. The report projected that approximately 469,000 electric vehicles could be sold in the next 4 years in the US. That’s another half million fewer customers getting refilled at your business, which makes it less likely they’ll be patronizing your auto repair business or splurging on something from your c-store.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again and again), you are not in the gasoline business, you are in the transportation energy business! For the last few decades that may have only meant gasoline and diesel, but the times they are a changin’. A service station west of Kansas City has become the first in the nation to start selling E15 at retail. The pumps are busy and customers are anxious to fill up with E15 because the pump price is about 30 cents below the price of gasoline being sold at the station. While I have serious concerns about the liability that still must be addressed before we see that fuel coming to New Jersey, the point is across the nation people are using less gasoline to move around. If you missed this seminar, then don’t make the same mistake twice. NJGCA hopes to help put on similar seminars for other forms of alternate fuels in the future. The bottom line is that we simply cannot afford to ignore these trends, or we’ll all be extinct. Your copy of our quarterly On the Road newsletter should be hitting your mailbox in the next few days. This issue is focused on how to secure your business, something everyone needs to know. As part of the regular Legislative Roundup section there is an update on the tobacco display ban that was put into effect in Haverstraw, New York. I mentioned this issue to you when it first came up back in late April; the small Village of Haverstraw in Rockland County had passed an ordinance that would have banned any display of any kind of tobacco product anywhere, meaning many customers might not even know that the store they were in sold any tobacco products. In the OTR it is mentioned that several major tobacco companies as well as the New York Association of Convenience Stores had filed suit against the small village claiming a violation of the first amendment’s freedom of speech protection. After the OTR had gone to print, it was announced that in light of the potential huge costs of fighting the lawsuit, Haverstraw officials have agreed to repeal the ban in exchange for the lawsuit being dropped. What makes the fight in this little town important is the precedent it would have set. If Haverstraw got away with such a draconian ban, it wouldn’t have been long before we saw similar bans put into effect in NJ. This could have been especially bad in New Jersey, where we have 566 different municipalities all jam-packed together. Imagine not being able to advertise or display the tobacco products you sell in your store while a competitor five minutes down the road in the next town still can. How will your customers even know that you sell tobacco? Hopefully the quick end to this law will discourage anyone from trying it elsewhere. We have also sent out our questionnaires to all the candidates running for Congress, Senate, and even President this year. The survey includes questions relating to all different aspects of your business, including tobacco sales. Hopefully we will get as good or better a response as we did to last year’s survey of candidates for the State Legislature. Thanks for listening – See you next week. Regards,
Equipment currently for sale, NJGCA member recently closed his shop. NJ2009 PIF BASE Stationary Unit (OBD Only) asking $2900. Call (908) 403-3088.
7/18/2012: 7/18/2012: 7/16/2012: 7/11/2012:
TRAINING CLASSES!! NEW JERSEY EMISSION INSPECTOR TRAINING PLEASE NOTE: FUTURE DATES WILL BE ADDED UPON REQUEST AND ACCORDING TO DEMAND. CONTACT DEBBIE at 973-376-0066 or DEBBIE@NJGCA.ORG TO LET HER KNOW YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TAKING A SPECIFIC CLASS. THIS WILL ALLOW US TO GAUGE YOUR NEEDS AND KEEP TRACK OF THOSE WISHING TO PARTICIPATE!!
MEMBER BENEFIT PARTNER MESSAGE TMP Energy Solutions We have had a number of NJGCA members successfully reduce their rate per kWh signing up through our energy saving program. We know it’s difficult to collect 12 months worth of previous electric bills to get an “accurate” analysis when comparing a variable rate to a fixed rate, but we now have another option available. This new solution is a power purchase option; the other program is still in full force and has saved members thousands of dollars. If you sign up for the power purchase option, you will be grouped with other NJGCA members until the minimum KW demand is acquired. By pooling the member’s usage together, you will be able to take advantage, as large energy users do, and receive a lower kWh rate. Each member will receive their own contract. Each member is responsible to sign and return the agreement the day it is received in order to secure the price for their group. Please do your due diligence, so when you receive the proposal and the agreement you will be able to make an intelligent decision. If by chance, you still want us to assess you bills, to give you a price to compare, we will require12 months of your most recent utility bills. There are no bills required, but we would still like to have one bill per meter on file to check account #’s, meter #’s service addresses and other pertinent information incase there is a problem. The term of the agreement is for 12 months. During this term period, you will have price protection against any energy price increases along with a low fixed kWh rate. If you are interested in becoming part of this power purchase option, please contact Phil Apruzzi at the NJGCA. Remember when you sign up your energy through the NJGCA Energy Program, TMP makes a considerable donation to the NJGCA Scholarship Fund through their proceeds. This has no affect on your rate, and costs you nothing out of pocket. We hope to help hundreds of NJGCA members reduce their utility costs by participating in this and our other cost reduction programs. Our purpose, in the endeavor, is to help NJGCA members lower their energy costs while supporting the NJGCA Scholarship Fund. Contact Phil Apruzzi at 973-376-0066 or email Phil at phil@njgca.org. Mention that you are interested in saving money on your energy bills. NJGCA & TMP Energy Solutions will handle all the rest.
POLITICAL PARTICIPATON: THE NJGCA PAC
Promoting our agenda in Trenton is of utmost importance to NJGCA and our members. We defeated BELOW COST SELLING We made history in getting FIRST RIGHT OF REFUSAL signed into law! We have built large support for RIGHT TO REPAIR and got it passed out of the Assembly We defended your small business against the false accusations of Attorney General Anne Milgram We gained wide support to move New Jersey to an all PIF Inspection System and close the CIF lanes ...and MUCH MORE!! In each instance, we achieved these goals with the help of our friends in the Legislature! If every member contributes just $100.00 we will be able to provide the help necessary to ensure victory for our allies. PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO: I understand that times are tough for all NJGCA members, but this is just as important as any battle we have fought in the past. We have made great progress in Trenton. I hope that you will answer the call. ?
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