Robert Gubser answered the phone at H&S  Auto Service Inc. and admitted he owns the place, but wasn’t so sure about the managing part. 

Pretty good humor under the circumstances. Gubser recently quit selling gasoline after 32 years in business, 14 as an owner, because it just doesn’t pay.  

The pressures on some independent operators, people running small filling stations, fixing and maintaining cars, have become impossible, as irrational as the ups and downs of the price of gasoline. 

“People need to realize what it’s like to be a marketer in the retail market of gasoline,” said Gubser, who sold gas at his place at 2510 S. 48th St. “The money that we lose just pumping a gallon of gas is what’s caused me to quit.”

People with callused, grease-stained hands, salesman’s smiles and a few minutes to jaw often don’t have the attractions and certainly not the revenue of convenience stores, which stock everything from lottery tickets, beer and cigarettes to pork rinds.

Gubser’s not the only one.

Dean Phelps at 6 to 6 Auto Service, 10th and M streets, posted his surrender to impossible margins weeks ago. Jesus Haro at Los Amigos Auto Repair and Sales at 17th and M did, too.

“If  I  make a dime, and now gas is back down to $2, I’m paying about 2.25 percent on the dollar for credit cards. That’s a nickel, there’s half your margin there,” said Gubser. “In the end, you got a guy behind the counter, you gotta pay him a fair wage. You’re in the hole, right there, unless you pump a couple  three thousand gallons a day, your ends don’t meet.”

He was selling about 500 gallons a day, and, by far, most of the business was by credit and debit cards.

No sense in it.

“Mechanical work is always what we made our living at, gasoline was part of our tradition,” Gubser said of his 12-bay operation. “In the time I’ve been here, gasoline has not been a profit center, but paid for itself. We looked at it to supply new customers. Basically, if it could break even it was a good marketing situation. 

“Right now, it’d be better to take money I was losing on gas and put it into a direct marketing campaign to bring in new customers.”

At 6 to 6, Phelps has his do-the-math explanation in hand, on paper and taped to the dry pumps.

He’d buy 2,000 gallons at a time, and mark it up 7 cents a gallon to be competitive and to break even on credit card processing fees. 

So he’d make $140 on an investment of more than $5,600, (given prices in August), $105 of which went to credit card fees, leaving a profit of $35 on every load of fuel every 10 days or so.

But that’s not counting the deductions for bad checks, state fees, maintenance on pumps.

No profit at all.

“This is the thing that kicked my butt,” he said, counting off $160 in bad checks. “And another $40 to chase the losers that wrote them.”

So Phelps, too, confines his work to what pays.

“I’m going to stick with what I can make money on,” he said.  “That’s the shop. “

He’s conceding the gasoline business to the bright, wide-laned, big-aisled convenience stores with cigarette ads in the windows, lots of beverages to sell, the chance of a winning lottery ticket and thousands of gallons of gasoline sales a day.

“They sell gasoline as a loss leader,” he said. “It doesn’t make good business sense for me.”

Phelps figures it would cost him $60,000 to convert his shop to a convenience store, $16,000 to pull his tanks if, after a year, he sells no more gasoline and the government makes him do it.  

Up M Street near 17th, Jesus Haro is fixing and selling cars, as he has for a few years here at Los Amigos.

“It’s a lot better than gas,” he said.

Haro, who stopped selling gas a couple of weeks ago, said he’s feeling pretty bad about it because he bought the station to be in that business.

“I go and buy at $3, then it goes down and everybody’s losing money, especially independents,” he said.

Haro said he’d reconsider his decision if prices stabilize and remain steady.

Gubser acknowledges it looks like the end of the line for the independent station fixing and filling cars. But his repair business is growing, and he has Budget rentals, too.

Phelps is still astounded by the habits of the roving gasoline customer.

“Just by a 1-cent difference,” he said, “I’d double my sales.”

The usual fill-up was 10 or 12 gallons.

“It’s the oddest thing I ever saw,” he said. “I’m sure people would drive four miles out of their way to save a dime.”

Phelps, too, maintains some wit along with the vehicles. 

“If somebody will come and put fuel in my tanks, I’ll give them all the profit I make,” he said.

Reach Richard Piersol at 473-7241 or at dpiersol@journalstar.com.

Independent gas retailers

There were 140 retail motor fuel licenses listed in Lincoln on the Nebraska Revenue Department Web site as of Sept. 19.

Of those, some are clearly among many owned by a single business, like Casey’s General Stores, or Whitehead Oil Co., or by a business whose primary operation is not gasoline retailing, like Duncan Aviation and Crete Carrier Corp.

Of the remainder, some are no longer selling gasoline, like 6 to 6 Auto Service.

There are fewer than 40 retail gas stations apparently owned by a business that has no more than one in Lincoln.