Jobber pricing looks opaque from the outside, but it is built from a small number of components: an index, a differential, freight, taxes, and credit terms. Once you can see the parts, you can negotiate them.
This guide explains how jobbers set prices, why their number differs from the sign at the corner station, and how pricing strategy varies by customer type.
The Components of a Delivered Price
Delivered cost equals the index (terminal rack posting, an OPIS average, or a contract price) plus the jobber's differential in cents per gallon, plus freight from terminal to your tank, plus federal, state, and local motor fuel taxes and environmental fees.
The differential covers the jobber's margin, credit risk, and overhead. It is the negotiable piece; taxes are not, and freight varies with distance and drop size.
Why Wholesale Differs From the Pump Price
A retail pump price includes the station's own margin, credit card fees of several cents per gallon, labor, rent, and local competitive pressure. Retailers also price to the street — sometimes below cost during a price war and well above rack when the market falls.
That is why wholesale and retail move at different speeds: rack prices reset daily while street prices lag, compressing retail margin when rack rises and expanding it when rack falls.
Pricing Strategies Jobbers Use
Common structures include rack-plus (transparent, indexed daily), fixed price for a term (budget certainty, hedged by the jobber), cost-plus with open-book invoicing, and net pricing where the differential is bundled and undisclosed.
Jobbers also price by customer economics: volume, drop size, credit quality, payment terms, equipment the jobber has funded, and whether the account is contracted or spot. Two customers on the same street can pay different differentials for defensible reasons.
How to Negotiate
Ask for the index and the differential separately, request the same index across bidders, commit to volume if you can honor it, take ACH terms if the discount is real, and revisit pricing annually rather than never.
Reviewing a supply agreement attached to a Florida station? Call The Gas Station Group at (305) 518-1545; all transactions are brokered through Fausto Commercial. See fuel supply agreement advisory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Speak With a Florida Gas Station Specialist
Request a confidential consultation or off-market opportunities and pricing through our contact page, or call +1-305-518-1545. The Gas Station Group is headquartered at 8603 S Dixie Hwy, Miami, FL 33143. Principal: Bobby Berrido.