By 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, more than 11 cars and trucks formed a line behind the pumps at the Fred Meyer gas station. The line was only getting longer.<\/p>\n
Between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, Fred Meyer dropped its fuel price by a dollar. The supermarket company\u2019s gas prices had been in the low $2.90s for a couple days until Tuesday morning, when the marquee read $1.91.<\/p>\n
Several Juneau residents expressed surprise and joy on social media as pictures of the gas prices started circulating. Some people even questioned whether it was a mistake. It was not.<\/p>\n
Store Director Jim Floyd didn\u2019t say much about the price drop, but he did confirm that it was intentional. For all other questions, he referred the Empire up the corporate ladder to spokesperson Melinda Merril, who did not respond by press time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe customers are really happy about it,\u201d Floyd said.<\/p>\n
Juneau resident Paul Leopold was one of the drivers taking advantage of the low gas price \u2014 the lowest he\u2019s seen here since the late \u201880s or early \u201890s, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst we were paying almost $5 per gallon,\u201d he said while he filled his large red truck. \u201cThen they dropped it like a dollar in a day!\u201d<\/p>\n
Leopold said that filling his work truck\u2019s 35-gallon tank is not a cheap endeavor, typically costing about $100. On Tuesday, however, he smiled as he watched the ticker on the pump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just hope it stays this low,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Empire, through reporter James Brooks, published an expose in its Sunday edition about price-gouging and why Juneau residents were paying more at the pump than residents in Anchorage, Seattle and across the Lower 48 states. Fred Meyer and Safeway, Juneau\u2019s two largest fuel purchasers, did not respond to repeated requests for comment for that story.<\/p>\n
Before Tuesday, the cheapest place to buy gas in Juneau was Fishermen\u2019s Bend in Auke Bay, which sold fuel some 30 cents cheaper than everywhere else in town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, more than 11 cars and trucks formed a line behind the pumps at the Fred Meyer gas station. The line was only getting longer. Between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, Fred Meyer dropped its fuel price by a dollar. The supermarket company\u2019s gas prices had been in the low $2.90s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":5388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5387"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}