Buc-ee's co-owner 'splains gas panic

Don Wasek, the co-owner of Buc-ee's, tells The Angleton Observer that the 24-hour gas panic that hit the Brazosport area last week was the result of good intentions that "backfired."

Wasek told S.K. Bardwell, managing editor of the AO, he thought Buc-ee's would be hailed as heroes because of its plan to sell cheaper gas during the Labor Day holiday.

Instead, some customers accused Buc-ee's of trying to maximize its profits. Here's the full story from the Sept. 8 edition of The Angleton Observer:

An imagined gas crisis last Thursday resulted in long gasoline lines, flaring tempers, accusations and conspiracy rumors.
Although it was over by the end of the day Thursday, the experience left Don Wasek, co-owner of Buc-ees, badly shaken.
Wasek said the 10 Buc-ees stores in the area had plenty of gas on Wednesday evening.
But it was $2.74-per-gallon gas, and Wasek, like everyone, knew gas prices were going to soar in the wake of Katrina – for businesses like his as well as for the public.
With the Labor Day weekend coming up, Wasek said, he saw the opportunity for a business coup: He would save that $2.74 gas for the long holiday weekend, when Buc-ees would be able to sell their fuel for 10 cents less per gallon than all the other stations.
“At 6 p.m. Wednesday, I called our 10 stores and told them to stop selling gas,” Wasek said. “But I didn’t tell them why.”
In a normal climate, drivers might have been merely annoyed by having to buy their gas elsewhere.
But the climate was anything but normal. Unnerved by the images and stories they had seen coming from Katrina’s strike zone, and with the first wave of refugees arriving here, many area residents saw the bagged pumps at Buc-ees as a sign of impending disaster, or worse.
Peggy Miller said she left her home in Danbury Thursday morning blithely unaware of the problem but arrived at the Wal-Mart in Angleton to find shoppers and employees alike discussing it.
“A woman in the frozen food section asked me if I’d filled my car up yet,” Miller said. “She said I’d better do it quick, because all the gas stations were going to close before the day was over.
“She said the stations were claiming to be out of gas, but it was really because they wanted to wait until it went up to $5 a gallon to sell any,” Miller said.
“Everywhere I went, that’s what everyone was saying. I got scared,” Miller said. She said she waited in line more than an hour to buy gas she didn’t really need.
Miller’s story was played out by hundreds of drivers all over the area, resulting in lines reminiscent of the 1970s gas shortages.
Wasek ordered the Buc-ees pumps turned back on Thursday, and sold the gas for $2.74. The same day, he said, Buc-ees received five loads of gas at $2.77, and five loads at $3.
“I thought when we showed up on the holiday weekend with gas 10 cents cheaper than everyone else, we’d be heroes,” Wasek said. “It backfired.”
In the heat of the imaginary crisis, several people called the Attorney-General’s Office to complain in advance of price-gouging they believed would happen.
“That’s what they thought,” Wasek said. “And that hurts, real bad.”

The SNAFU certainly has engendered a lot of ill will toward Buc-ee's, whose behind-the-counter employees are among the most cheerful here in the Petrochemical Underarm of Texas.

There's even a boycott Buc-ees website up that's sending a lot of traffic here due its linkage to our armchair commentary.

OK, everybody, just cool off, take a deep breath and count to 10. Put some of that energy into helping with Katrina relief, or welcoming newcomers from Louisiana and Mississippi to our area.

Meanwhile, Enormous Incongruities is keeping the heat on the Buc-ee's bunch.

[via EQ's]
[angletonobserver.org]