I've just read through this thread and there are so many conflicting opinions! Some say Esso are great, others not. Some Shell, others not.
The whole thing about supermarket petrol I can't understand is, there *must* be something different about it for them to offer it at a lower price. Surely they don't have more buying power than BP/Esso/Shell etc?
Saying that, I nearly always use the Supermarkets because they're convenient and cheap, and haven't noticed any loss of performance or lumpy tickover!
Filling up with Petrol
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CJ
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2003 12:42 pm
Hi, I'm a newbie to this site so bear with me! 
I used to work for Esso in the head office.
As others have mentioned, the fuel sold in geographical areas usually comes from one supplier (e.g. BP out of Grangemouth, Esso out of West London etc etc).
The base fuel is therefore exactly the same. It's the ADDITIVES that differentiate between the products. Supermarket petrol is typically unadditised - if you used supermarket fuel constantly for 7-8 years your engine would probably suffer some damage.
One of the additives the oil majors put into the fuel is a cleaning agent that keeps the engine all nice and sparkly.
If you top up with oil major fuel every 6 fill ups or so, the additives will keep the engine sweet.
Lack of additives is one reason for cheaper fuel, the other is that supermarkets sell such a large amount of fuel (due to the footfall of the supermarket itself) that fixed costs per litre of fuel sold are much lower. They also sell fuel at a loss as it in turn generates more customers into the store - it's a loss leader.
Oh, and a boycott of BP & Esso won't work cos they hardly make any profit on selling petrol in this country anyway so probably wouldn't care if they didn't sell too much of it........
I used to work for Esso in the head office.
As others have mentioned, the fuel sold in geographical areas usually comes from one supplier (e.g. BP out of Grangemouth, Esso out of West London etc etc).
The base fuel is therefore exactly the same. It's the ADDITIVES that differentiate between the products. Supermarket petrol is typically unadditised - if you used supermarket fuel constantly for 7-8 years your engine would probably suffer some damage.
One of the additives the oil majors put into the fuel is a cleaning agent that keeps the engine all nice and sparkly.
If you top up with oil major fuel every 6 fill ups or so, the additives will keep the engine sweet.
Lack of additives is one reason for cheaper fuel, the other is that supermarkets sell such a large amount of fuel (due to the footfall of the supermarket itself) that fixed costs per litre of fuel sold are much lower. They also sell fuel at a loss as it in turn generates more customers into the store - it's a loss leader.
Oh, and a boycott of BP & Esso won't work cos they hardly make any profit on selling petrol in this country anyway so probably wouldn't care if they didn't sell too much of it........