'Crazy' gasoline market a secretive one

By Keith Roysdon, Star Press

kroysdon@muncie.gannett.com

MUNCIE -- There are few industries as simultaneously open and secretive as the business of gasoline retailing.

Gas prices are posted on huge signs along major thoroughfares, and industry figures ask us to imagine how consumers would react if the cost of a gallon of milk or loaf of bread were similarly advertised, with all their price fluctuations.

At the same time, gasoline retailers are cautious, even secretive, about public knowledge of their business. A spokesman for Indiana petroleum marketers -- the public liaison for the people who sell gas -- politely declines to say where most of the gas sold in Muncie and Delaware County comes from.