Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Brian Nagel - UBS.
Brian Nagel - UBS
As we look at the results and clearly an improvement from what we saw earlier in the year, is there a way that you could break out how much TA benefited in the quarter from the decline in fuel prices versus some of the strategic efforts you guys have put in place over the past several months?
Andrew J. Rebholz
I can’t break it out specifically but what I can tell you is that we attribute some of that increase to things that have sort of presented themselves in the market place to us but also to things that we have done. The focus on the things that we have done I think during this third quarter versus last third quarter our pricing strategy and protocols were shall we say refined versus where they were in the third quarter last year.
Remember that we canceled the Simons Petroleum contract which was not an insignificant number of gallons for which we earned very low pumping fees. We canceled that, went through a year-long initial transition phase through May of this year after which we were free to compete directly. We have had over 90% conversion rate on those gallons and that’s certainly helped.
Being able to manage fuel purchasing in the new environment if you will that caused sort of a bottleneck as we’ve talked before about putting lines of credit in place and things like that and working through trade credit issues in the higher fuel environment, adding systems to our processes to buy better; all of those things and as I said I can’t tell you specifically how much in terms of cents per gallon but all of those things are brought to bear in the third quarter along with the positive that is derived from sort of naturally our pricing structure, the industry’s pricing structure from declining fuel prices.
Brian Nagel - UBS
On the environment, given how difficult it was over the past few months with the declining macro environment and rapidly rising fuel prices, to what extent do you think competition has eased? People pulled out of the market place and then the follow on to that would be, has TA been able to capitalize on that opportunity?
Thomas M. O’Brien
Actually I think that the benefits t hat we’ve seen from declining prices in fuel have been enjoyed, that portion of it that we were talking about, probably by everybody; anybody who’s lived through the ups and downs of this industry.
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