Opinion ID: 104841
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: Reserving for separate consideration the facts determining the issue of interstate commerce, the other material facts are summarized here on the basis of the Commission's findings. The sales described are those of Red Crown gasoline because those sales raise all of the material issues and constitute about 90% of petitioner's sales in the Detroit area. Since the effective date of the Robinson-Patman Act, June 19, 1936, petitioner has sold its Red Crown gasoline to its jobber customers at its tank-car prices. Those prices have been 1 1/2¢ per gallon less than its tank-wagon prices to service station customers for identical gasoline in the same area. In practice, the service stations have resold the gasoline at the prevailing retail service station prices. [3] Each of petitioner's so-called jobber customers has been free to resell its gasoline at retail or wholesale. Each, at some time, has resold some of it at retail. One now resells it only at retail. The others now resell it largely at wholesale. As to resale prices, two of the jobbers have resold their gasoline only at the prevailing wholesale or retail rates. The other two, however, have reflected, in varying degrees, petitioner's reductions in the cost of the gasoline to them by reducing their resale prices of that gasoline below the prevailing rates. The effect of these reductions has thus reached competing retail service stations in part through retail stations operated by the jobbers and in part through retail stations which purchased gasoline from the jobbers at less than the prevailing tank-wagon prices. The Commission found that such reduced resale prices have resulted in injuring, destroying, and preventing competition between said favored dealers and retail dealers in respondent's [petitioner's] gasoline and other major brands of gasoline . . . . 41 F. T. C. 263, 283. The distinctive characteristics of these jobbers are that each (1) maintains sufficient bulk storage to take delivery of gasoline in tank-car quantities (of 8,000 to 12,000 gallons) rather than in tank-wagon quantities (of 700 to 800 gallons) as is customary for service stations; (2) owns and operates tank wagons and other facilities for delivery of gasoline to service stations; (3) has an established business sufficient to insure purchases of from one to two million gallons a year; and (4) has adequate credit responsibility. [4] While the cost of petitioner's sales and deliveries of gasoline to each of these four jobbers is no doubt less, per gallon, than the cost of its sales and deliveries of like gasoline to its service station customers in the same area, there is no finding that such difference accounts for the entire reduction in price made by petitioner to these jobbers, and we proceed on the assumption that it does not entirely account for that difference. Petitioner placed its reliance upon evidence offered to show that its lower price to each jobber was made in order to retain that jobber as a customer and in good faith to meet an equally low price offered by one or more competitors. The Commission, however, treated such evidence as not relevant.