Imperial Oil Canada selling all Esso gas stations

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No Costco membership for me, and, for whatever reason, I just don't hit Superstore's pumps. Their hours are a bit better than some of the one's that annoy me, but they're still not ideal. Basically, anyone that can't be bothered making at least one or two twenty-four hour gas stations in the city, well, I can't be bothered buying from them.

Technically, you won't "miss them" since they're really not going anywhere. Ownership may change for some of your stations, assuming that hasn't happened already. In this city, absolutely nothing will change, since none of the stations are owned by Imperial Oil anyhow. The distributorship has been semi-independent for years, too.
 
Pretty much every last drop of petrol in Saskatchewan comes from the Regina Co-Op refinery and is trucked around the province. Yes, trucked. Theoretically there's a railway between Regina and Saskatoon (and pretty much everywhere else that's important), but they don't really ship fuel around intra-province that way.

Its basically futile to try and 'compete' with the Co-Op "empire" in almost any line of business. People are loyal to the end, and since they have some sort of tax preference that's not accorded to most "for profit" businesses, they have a structural advantage over the for-profit competitors.

The other 'big' change people might notice in the future is that "Mac's"-branded stores will be moving to "Circle K" as Alimentation Couche-Tard phases out the "Mac's" brand.
 
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Yep, the Mac's stuff is up for a change. As for the Co-op, well, they do have some disadvantages, notably their excessively high wages and their store hours which are straight out of the 1950s, or small town Saskatchewan, whichever one wishes to use as a comparison.
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All they need to start doing is close Sundays and Mondays in homage to Regina's store hours bylaw from decades ago.
 
I think a few of the Co-Op stores in Victoria, BC are 24 hours; I know one of my friends worked at one for a bit.

When I used to live in New York and go into Ontario and Quebec frequently, I would gas up at Esso as I had a ExxonMobil card, which I found out that for some weird reason in 2005, I had to go inside the store and they had to run the transaction with carbon copy prints and submit them manually; and that took FOREVER to even post on my card statement; I think one time it popped up 60 days later.

However since I'm in the Pacific NW, I go into BC maybe once or twice a year and I get gas usually at Costco or the gas bar at Canadian Tire.
 
That's interesting to know. In this province, you'll never find any Co-op open past 9:00 p.m., maybe 10:00 p.m. at the outside. 6:00 p.m. isn't unheard of in parts of this province. On the positive side, they do have twenty-four hour cardlocks, and the cards are good throughout the province. I never tried outside the province.

Don't talk to me about strange cards and doing carbon copies and card imprints!
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That can still be experienced in a few weird scenarios, unfortunately.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
That's interesting to know. In this province, you'll never find any Co-op open past 9:00 p.m., maybe 10:00 p.m. at the outside. 6:00 p.m. isn't unheard of in parts of this province. On the positive side, they do have twenty-four hour cardlocks, and the cards are good throughout the province. I never tried outside the province.

Don't talk to me about strange cards and doing carbon copies and card imprints!
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That can still be experienced in a few weird scenarios, unfortunately.


Yeah, I just looked at the Peninsula Co-Op website and looks like all the locations on Vancouver Island close around 10 PM; the one that I thought was 24 hours turns out was a Petro Canada that I was thinking of.

Speaking of weird cards, I remember back in the day, my grandfather could use his Citgo card at Petro Canada; which was the result of some sort of corporate alliance resulting from the 1988 Olympics, but it was never put on the back of the card.
 
Well, there you go. If Co-ops in BC can't go twenty-four hours, they're not doing it anywhere.
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10:00 p.m. is excessively late for them, though. I thought people that worked for the retail arms of Co-ops had to sign an agreement to be tucked into bed by 9:00 p.m. or get turned into a pumpkin.
 
Yeah go figure right? I ended up just for sport calling up the Co-Op I know of in Victoria at Wilkinson and Interurban the other day and the gal at the counter quickly told me they are open 7 AM to 10 PM and the reason why was that there was a shareholder vote on it decades ago.
 
Originally Posted By: KE7JFF
I ended up just for sport calling up the Co-Op I know of in Victoria at Wilkinson and Interurban the other day and the gal at the counter quickly told me they are open 7 AM to 10 PM and the reason why was that there was a shareholder vote on it decades ago.

I think even 10:00 p.m. is a stretch in this province. They do have a lot of cardlock facilities, which does help out, but not everyone has cardlock access or wants it. As userfriendly points out, they are more common than trees down here. My only real misgiving is that the premium hangs in the tanks too long.
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I bet the regular gasoline @ cardlocks is a blend of whatever is left over in those monster super-B's before they return to the plant.
My CN/Cando question was a poke about a rouge tank car. Lol.
 
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He he, well, I wouldn't be surprised. Of course, getting a cardlock isn't as easy as it used to be, not hard, though either. You used to just tell the manager you wanted one, and they gave you one. Those days are gone.
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The benefits are pretty decent, though.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak

I think even 10:00 p.m. is a stretch in this province. They do have a lot of cardlock facilities, which does help out, but not everyone has cardlock access or wants it. As userfriendly points out, they are more common than trees down here. My only real misgiving is that the premium hangs in the tanks too long.
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I haven't been to SK yet, but my friends tell me that even Tim Hortons close at 6...
 
Actually, I was thinking a few blocks east of there. One on Albert and 4th has some weird hours, as does the one right downtown on Broad Street. That could very well have something to do with the landlord's regulations, with that store not being a standalone affair as is the norm. But, given that it's like a block and a half away from the casino that's open late, you think it would have enough traffic going by at late night. By the time the casino closes, the early risers are starting to get coffee.
 
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