“Costco is now rationing motor oil.”
“I’m just gonna be honest with you, this is gonna be expensive,” a Valvoline tech reportedly said.
Consider those words and the reaction from creator @dmay.eats as a warning for anyone who hasn’t gotten an oil change lately. The sticker shock she experienced wasn’t necessarily an isolated case, and the supply problems driving up motor-oil prices could stick around for a while.
“He showed me that price, $140. What? To get an oil change—and then the oil itself was $127,” she said in the clip that’s been viewed more than 400,000 times. “This man was talking about there’s an oil shortage, and so they’re charging out the wazoo for oil.”
Any “oil shortage” claim might sound like a suspect and dubious excuse coming from a shop that just quoted someone $140 for an oil change, but the Valvoline tech wasn’t pulling the explanation out of thin air.
Valvoline itself warned investors recently that supplies of Group III base oil, a key ingredient in full-synthetic motor oil, had tightened across the industry following disruptions to the global oil supply chain. The company said its own supply relationships meant it wasn’t worried about actually running out of product, but the oil it could get was becoming considerably more expensive.
Valvoline CEO Lori Flees told investors the company expected finished-lubricant costs to climb as much as 60% above March levels. The company estimated that translates to roughly another $5 to $7 in cost for an oil change, depending on the lubricant.
The company’s latest quarterly results said same-store sales rose 8%, with price fluctuations credited for part of the increase. Prices are expected to continue rising as lubricant costs have gone higher.
So the tech’s description of an “oil shortage” was simplified but accurate in layman’s terms. Valvoline says it still has reliable access to motor oil, but there is an industry-wide squeeze on an important ingredient in synthetic oil, with still-higher prices as a result.
Customers are starting to see evidence of that squeeze elsewhere as well. Costco recently raised the price of its Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil to roughly $58 for a 10-quart package, nearly twice the roughly $30 it cost last year. The retailer is also limiting members to two boxes every seven days and has placed purchase limits on Mobil 1 motor oil.
That makes some of the alarm in @dmay.eats’ comments section look considerably less far-fetched. Viewers repeatedly pointed to Costco’s purchase limits as evidence that something unusual was happening with motor oil, while others insisted there was no shortage at all.
There’s no indication drivers are about to find empty shelves everywhere, and Valvoline says its own locations remain supplied. But the company also expects the Group III supply problem to persist beyond the immediate disruption, meaning drivers may continue feeling the effects in the price of an otherwise routine maintenance stop.
Some viewers were already treating the higher prices as a new long-term reality that drivers should prepare to work around.
“Changing your oil is THE EASIEST thing you can learn to do on a car,” one commenter wrote, arguing that a few YouTube videos could eliminate the need to pay a shop at all.
That wasn’t really an option @dmay.eats appeared ready to embrace. The Valvoline technician offered her a compromise that made the economics of the whole encounter even stranger: bring back her own oil, and the shop would apparently perform the change for $30.
“This man sent me to the store and said, ‘If you go get some, we’ll change it for $30, but you gotta go get your own oil,” she said, describing her eventual trip, wandering around AutoZone, and trying to figure out which oil she needed.
The comments section quickly pointed out why “just change it yourself” isn’t a universal answer anyway.
“Not everyone is able bodied or has the space/time to change their own oil tho,” one viewer responded. Another noted that people living in apartments are often prohibited from working on vehicles in their parking lots.
For drivers with the tools, space, and know-how, buying oil themselves may become a more attractive way to keep maintenance costs down. For everyone else, @dmay.eats’ trip to Valvoline may be a preview of an increasingly unpleasant part of routine car ownership: paying more for the same basic service, even when the shop itself knows the price is going to hurt.
Motor1 reached out to the creator via direct message and comment on the clip and to Valvoline via email. We’ll update this if they respond.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motor1.com?
– The Motor1.com Team