How many gas stations are there in US?

nbr of gas stations out there

let's say US population is 300,000,000 today and on average a gas station would produce 6000$ in a business day that's 42,000$ a week, round it to 50,000$ as an average revenue per week for a US gas station...on average a person would spend 25$ per week on gas, that's 2000 cars as the gas station's customers per week, roughly 300 per day...

meaning every gas station serves around 300 customers per day so there must be around 1,000,000 gas stations in the US

One million is a way too high guess, the exact number is closer to 167 000; source National Petroleum Convenience Marketers www.npnweb.com

"...meaning every gas station...1 million gas stations in the US" maths in this are confusing: you don't fill up every single day, you do it once a week so you have to divide 1 million by 7 (days a week) and you'll come out with 142 thousand stations, much closer to reality

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According to the economic census for retail trade (census.gov) in 1997 there were only 126,889 gas stations (64% of them having convienence stores). The next set of data from 2002 shows this number actually *declining* to 121,446 (down 4.3% over 5 years). Interestingly enough, however, the % of stations with convienence stores rose from 64% to 77%. While there are no posted numbers for 2007 at the time of my investigation, the 1997-2002 numbers give us two key indicators that the number is more likely the same or lower for 2008.

First, providing fueling stations is likely more based on *coverage area* than populace, sort of like ATMs. As long as you have stations in key locations, you can (almost) always simply rebuild them to have more pumps and more tank capacity if demand in the particular area is high. A decline in the raw number of gas stations indicates that over time the industry gets better at strategically placing stations and eliminating redundant, smaller stations.

Second, the increased % of gas stations with convienence stores also suggests that the industry isn't spending money on creating NEW stations, it's spending money on expanding the ones they already have. This of course is very give-and-take, as we have not developed 100% of the US territories and new cities and neighborhoods are constantly popping up.

So without getting too crazy with the math, I simply took the 1997 and 2002 census data and continued the trend based on the limited data:

1997 - 126,889 gas stations. 81,684 (64%) with convenience stores.
2002 - 121,446 gas stations. 93,691 (77%) with convenience stores.
*2007 - 116,223 gas stations. 104,600 (90%) with convenience stores.
*2008 - 115,223 gas stations. 106,696 (92.6%) with convenience stores.

* Estimated guess based on 1997-2002 trends.

There you have it. If I had to guess I'd wager there are only about 115-118k gas stations in America tops.

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Great analyisis. I found at NPN MarketFacts 2008 the station count for 2007, and according to them there are 161,768.

(http://www.npnweb.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=A79131211D8846B1A33169AF72F78511&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=CD6098BB12AF47B7AF6FFC9DF4DAE988)

How many are there Wolrdwide? Since the US accounts, with its almost 10 million Barrels per day gasoline consumption, for the 30% of the world's 27 million Bpd, there should be some 500 000 gas stations worldwide

First answer by ID1388714020. Last edit by Skol63. Contributor trust: 20 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 16 [recommend question]