This relatively young writer can actually remember a day long-ago and far-away when the price of gas fell below $1 per gallon. True story. It makes me feel elderly to be able to say that, but the sad thing is that I'm only twenty-five-years-old. It was just between Christmas and New Years of 2000, I pulled my junky little 1986 Buick Summerset into the local gas station and as I selected my fuel grade, I noticed that the price had no number before the decimal. It was only $0.98 per gallon-I broke into dance right there at the pump.

But that was one day in my whole life. Chances weren't great even then that that day was ever going to come again, and today 98-cent gasoline is on realism-par with Never-never Land, the Tooth Fairy, and those elves who live in a hollow tree making cookies: don't count on any of them.

Today's situation
Basically since that day, gas prices have steadily risen around the world, with a few periodic dips that never really amounted to much. In the US today, the luckiest of lucky at the fuel pump are paying around $3.50 per gallon, and the unluckiest (generally folks living on either coast) are looking at just about $4.00 to the gallon. Even worse-off are auto-owners across the pond. In the UK, the average price of gasoline (or "petrol" if you will) is 96.5p per liter. Doesn't sound quite as bad to the untrained American ear, but when you calculate out all the conversions, that comes to roughly $8.60 per gallon. Simply put, the whole world is screaming whenever we have to buy gas.

So what on earth does any of this have to do with a franchise website?
Aside from the fact that investors with enough capital could very well purchase a gas station franchise, fuel prices have a good deal to do with any franchise, except perhaps the work at home franchise.

I can tell you from experience that not having to pay for gas is wonderful. For the last couple years, I've been bus-bound for lack of income. Of course it's not easy to not have a car, but comparatively, the $45 per month for a bus pass is more-or-less what I would have been spending per week were I buying gasoline for an automobile. This of course, is not practical for many, mostly because the car is the primary means by which folks get to and from work. But wait-what if work were conducted from a home office?

If your job were running your own Billboard Connection franchise from your living room, waking up and being able to walk the 20 feet to work instead of driving into town every day would, by itself, save you piles of money in fuel. Calculate out an fairly short drive of 10 miles to work and 10 miles back, 5 times a week, in a decently efficient car getting 20 miles per gallon, and you're looking at roughly $20 a week, which in turn is $80 per month. I wouldn't mind avoiding that cost-along with the headache of traffic. Of course, any reasonable person reads all this and thinks, hey, I'll just take the bus to work to save on gas. Granted, that does help your net travel cost, and I'm all for the use of public transportation, but a person interested in starting his own franchise should just as well save the whole cost of that going-to-work gas and work from home.

Even pitted against each other, some home based businesses still have the upper fuel hand. Take, for instance, the difference between a Palm Beach Specialty Coffee franchise and a Doody Calls franchise. With the first, most of your work is literally done at home: calling clients, taking orders, and shipping in merchandise, whereas with the second, though the owner needn't waste gas driving into the office, there is plenty of money being spent on the fuel necessary to get work vans to their various job sites. At worst, the work from home Palm Beach owner may need to drive to a local shop to schmooze.

There are always far more things to consider when starting a new franchise than at first we think, and fuel cost is one of those things. So consider the mundane implications of your franchise purchase before you make it, and if your home business saves you enough money, consider going to the gas station every now and then, just to gloat-and maybe break into dance.

May 21, 2008