Sam's Club fuel: $4.87

 

Sam's fuel: $4.689

 😠

 

Sam's Club fuel was $4.39 yesterday evening

Fuel is up 50-cents a gallon in two days.

 

I shopped at Sam's Club this afternoon and gas wasn't $4.09 like yesterday, nor $4.19 like this morning

 It was $4.39.

I just mailed a letter at my rural gas station on the corner and gasoline is $4.99/gal

To think I filled up yesterday at Sam's for $4.09. 

Diesel is $5.99.

The average price of unleaded regular gasoline in 2022 was $4.09, but that's what I paid for it yesterday at Sam's Club, except now this morning it's $4.19!

Gasoline stations around Grand Rapids were selling gasoline for $4.29/gallon yesterday.

Gas Buddy says the average price in my county this morning is $4.791 and climbing. 

 

Immigrant worker shortage impacts produce quality at Sam's Club?

 I bought six heads of romaine lettuce yesterday like I usually do at Sam's Club every couple of weeks, for $4.46.

Such a deal, right? 

Well, this has never happened before in years of shopping at Sam's: the cores were rotten. I barely salvaged half of it. 

I also bought a five pound bag of organic carrots, for $3.62. That's always a great deal at Sam's, except this time all the carrots in the bin were THIN, THIN, THIN, and LIMP.

Summer weather is hard on such produce in any case, but I've been buying this stuff year round at Sam's for years and have never experienced this.

I should have taken the stuff back, but I do live in the country and I have compost piles. 

Worms gotta eat, same as buzzards.

 

 

  

The $3.45 average price of gasoline in 2024 was not quite 7% higher than the inflation adjusted price of $3.23/gallon from 1978

 Gasoline prices are moderating slowly in 2025 even as the inflation-adjusted price rises to $3.27.

Gasoline actually averaged $3.27 in the first half of 2025, dead on the money for what it should cost if it were only adjusted for inflation since 1978.

Gasoline retailers like convenience stores don't make their money on gasoline, with profit margins on gasoline in the 2% range. They make it on stuff like milk, the free-market price of which is a great mystery. AI thinks the unregulated price of milk right now would be about $4.00/gallon.

At the corner convenience store near where I live, a gallon of whole milk is a whopping $4.99, but eight miles down the road at my grocery it's only $3.45, so it's a mark-up of 45% for the convenience. 

But my grocery offers a routine discount coupon of 60 cents per gallon of milk, which brings the price down to $2.85, which Sam's can't beat at $3.23. Milk is my grocery's loss leader to get me in the store, like rotisserie chicken is a loss leader for Sam's and Costco, or like gasoline.

Gasoline this morning at Sam's is $3.01/gallon.

My momma told me, you better shop around. 

Meanwhile average fuel economy in 2023 is 27.1 miles on a gallon of gasoline, up from about 17.6 in 1978.

Seems like we should be doing better in that department. 

 

Liars all over Elon Musk's X kept saying Trump brought egg prices down, but in March 2025 they were more expensive than ever on an average basis: $6.227 per dozen

Sam's Club, when it has eggs in stock, is charging in the mid to high 4s per dozen.

 

Meanwhile, speaking of wholesale prices, you are paying $9+ a dozen for eggs in some places because producer prices averaged $4.62 in December

 That would be 75-cents for an egg that cost the producer about 19-cents.

I got a $1 off 18 eggs yesterday at a nearby health food store and paid $6.99, 39-cents each.

Why eggs are selling for over $9 a dozen in some places—and when prices are expected to drop

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

This is the second time egg prices have surged since 2022, following a previous wave of avian flu that wiped out large numbers of egg-laying hens and caused supply shortages that year. Avian flu has wiped out over 100 million chickens since a major outbreak began in early 2022.

 

You would think chicken prices would go up, too, but I consistently get chicken thighs in bulk at Sam's for $1.38/lb, and have done so right through the pandemic.

And the rotisserie chicken remains $4.98, too.

We'll get December consumer prices tomorrow. Here's November's chart for eggs:

 

 

The country goes insane over toilet paper again

 Not one roll of toilet paper available at my local Sam's Club.

Not one roll available at Sam's Club online.

Hello, the strike was called off.

Meanwhile, back in the everyday world of what's for breakfast this summer, let's talk about eggs

 In June 2019 a dozen eggs averaged $1.20 vs. $2.72 now . . . up 127%.

In other words, the price has more than doubled in five years.

Yesterday I paid $3.39 at my local grocery, for one of the last two cartons available. The place was cleaned out!

I save 50 cents on a dozen there, if I remember to download their coupon. But that's still $2.89/dozen, not $2.72.

Sam's Club's equivalent is $2.19/dozen . . . but they're . . . ALL OUT. 

So I pay a fat membership fee at Sam's for the privilege of paying 83% more for eggs than I did in 2019.

But not this week.

This illustrates why half of the country, which makes less than $41,000 per year, is still PISSED.

Permanently higher prices for the basics looks to be the future

 The simple egg is now 25% more expensive at Sam's Club compared with pre-Covid. I used to pay routinely $3.98 for two dozen like those shown below. Prices nationally have fallen only to the unusually high levels of 2015.

Whole chicken is up 23%, electricity 18%, and both appear to be stable or rising.

Avian flu is now only sporadic.

 

Unavailable at any price: 53 of my 184 frequently ordered items are not available at Sam's Club this morning . . . 29%!

 Is that the new meaning of inflation?

Pandemic of the vaccinated: 46,821 US COVID-19 deaths in the first 18 days of February 2022

2,601 deaths per day, the equivalent of 72,833 through the end of the month.

71,680 died in February 2021, third worst month on record.

1 died in February 2020.

February 2022 would replace February 2021 as the third worst month yet for deaths during the entire pandemic, if the 18-day trend persisted.

It is more likely, however, to come in fourth, but only because the weekly pace has slowed since the 12th. If that slowing trend continues, total deaths will probably come in around 65,000 and may still be worse than January.

This shouldn't be happening with 252 million fully or partly vaccinated, who obviously share some of the responsibility for helping to spread this disease to vulnerable people because the CDC failed to stress the inability of the vaccines they took to stop transmission. They've known since July 27th, reported on it, were roundly mocked, but were too cowed and too invested in the vaccines to stress the truth in their main messaging.

The high percentage of breakthrough deaths since last July in places like Massachusetts, which was ground zero for the breakthrough case bomb in Provincetown on July 4th, shows that many of these same people also are victims of their misplaced faith.

Meanwhile the public has given up. Sam's Club was packed yesterday afternoon, and I could count the masks on the fingers of one hand. 

Vulnerable people should wake up and protect themselves.

No one else is going to.

You might as well be fetal tissue.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

Sam's Club seemed fully stocked to me this morning: No shortages of anything I needed

Eggs, butter, and ketchup prices were a little bit higher than previously.

No supply chain issues observed this morning at Sam's Club

 The place was brimming with everything I usually buy and need.

Lynn Afendoulis running vs. Peter Meijer in MI-3 says attack ad against her traces to Meijer crony "former" Democrat Greg Orman

Afendoulis says Orman is behind the Fix Congress Now! mailings attacking her.

She says Peter Meijer donated in 2017 to Orman's failed run for governor in Kansas in 2018.

She also says Orman's Fix Congress Now! is funded by Unite America, whose board members include Orman.

Unite America stands for Ranked Choice Voting, Open Primaries, Vote By Mail, and Independent Redistricting, all of which traditional Republicans have opposed.

Orman ran as a Democrat against Republican Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas in 2008 but now claims to be an independent.

DeVos money is backing Meijer.

I recommend a vote for Afendoulis, and shopping at Sam's Club.

 

On the morning of March 10, Michigan had zero cases of infection from China novel coronavirus 2019

Tonight, April 10, we have  22,646 cases and 1,280 deaths, and we're afraid even to go grocery shopping.

They are limiting entry at Sam's Club to 300 at a time, and customers there today are wearing homemade masks.

They finally had toilet paper. And chicken. Still no butter, though.

Happy Easter.

Things on my list I couldn't get at Sam's Club today due to coronavirus panic shopping

butter

bacon

lettuce

Got everything else I wanted, though. 19 items.

Interesting that I wasn't permitted to buy two bags of mandarin oranges or two bags of frozen flounder, only one of each, but I was permitted to buy two 1.75 liter bottles of vodka and two bags of bagels.