CITGO had its big marketers meeting at the beautiful Phoenician in Phoenix Arizona last week. And in spite of some of the coldest temperatures recorded in 19 years, marketers walked away from the meeting with some very hot news. The hottest of the news was said to be CITGO’s announcement that it will be adding a new brand to its lineup – MileMaster. According to marketers, the new brand, MileMaster, will be offered as a price fighting “house brand” designed to help marketers compete with the growing segment of private label lubricants.

Marketers say another hot issue coming out of the meeting was CITGO’s new organizational chart. Complete coverage of the meeting will be covered in the print issue of Jobbers World.

Factoid: For those of you with a touch of grey in your hair, you may remember that the Milemaster name is not new. In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, Milemaster was the brand name for Cities Service’s regular gasoline.

JobbersWorld is pleased to announce a new quarterly benchmarking survey designed specifically to keep marketers in touch with the cost to procure lubricants from majors and independent lubricant manufacturers. The survey, JW Price Monitor, is offered at two service levels and will debut at the start of the second quarter 2007.

Word on the street is that Mopar, the automobile parts and service arm of the DaimlerChrysler American brands, announced a rather hefty price increase for the Mopar genuine oil it sells to new car dealers. Although unconfirmed by Mopar, dealers Jobbers World spoke with say the price of Mopar lubricants jump up nearly $1.80 a gallon, starting on January 1, 2007. Whereas one dealer said he was paying $6.45 a gallon for a 5W-30 in 2006, today its cost is $8.00 a gallon. Similar increases were also said to have impacted the price of all other viscosity grades of Mopar lubricants.

But before dealers and others conclude someone involved with pricing at Mopar must be either crazy or overly courageous, there are several issues to consider. First, although ExxonMobil has reportedly increased the price it charges Mopar for lubricants, according to dealers, Mopar has not pushed through a price increase in about a year and a half. In other words, an increase was long overdue when one considers the number of times others lubricant marketers increased prices over the same period.

The second issue to consider, however, may be even more important. This issue speaks to changes Mopar made to its dealer programs. The specifics of these changes and their potential impact on what a dealer actually pays for Mopar oil are discussed in the upcoming print issue of Jobbers World.