‘Crazy’ lines at Black Friday gas sale in Merced

Vehicles lined up in all directions were “crazy” all day at a Merced gas station that got in on the Black Friday spirit for the first time this year, according to employees.

The hot-ticket item was $1.99 per gallon gasoline at the Chevron and Bi-Rite Liquor on Martin Luther King Jr. Way on Friday, the shopping day that follows Thanksgiving every year.

Graciela Munguia, 47, of Merced said her daughter showed her a Facebook post Friday about the gas. She jumped up and headed to the station immediately, she said.

The price was worth the 40-minute wait, she said, and she was going to do it all over again.

“I’m actually going to take this car (home) and bring another,” she said. “Take advantage.”

Employees near the pumps directed the traffic as lines stretched on Martin Luther King Jr. Way north from the station to the intersection at 13th Street. Another line of cars stretched west on 11th Street.

The employees said the lines were not so bad when the station first opened at 4 a.m. but got increasingly longer as the day went on. An advertisement for the special was shared hundreds of times on Facebook, station employees said.

The price was 20 cents per gallon cheaper than the next-cheapest gas in the area, according to GasBuddy.com, which tracks gas prices. And, $1.99 per gallon made it the cheapest Chevron station in the state and about 80 cents cheaper than it would have been without the sale price, according to owner Fawas Eltareb.

“It’s our Black Friday,” he said. “All day until midnight.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 4:16 PM with the headline "‘Crazy’ lines at Black Friday gas sale in Merced."