Reporter: Up to six drivers at a time can fill their gas tanks at the Astoria Tiger Exxon station on 21st Street in Queens. But with high gas prices, many of them are not filling up. Muhammad Ali is the cashier at the station.
Muhammad Ali: "Three months before, we sold 3,000 gallons every day. Now we sold only 2,000 gallons."
Reporter: Astoria Tiger's owner, Leslie Ramnarayan, says he pays $2.84 for the regular gas that he sells at $2.99 a gallon. That's 15 cents left over for him. But he says he gets only 8 to 10 cents for every gallon of gas sold, the same as when he opened the station 11 years ago. The margin remains the same because competition prevents him from charging more to compensate for the higher cost of purchasing gasoline from the refiner.
Leslie Ramnarayan: "You see, when gas was $1.50 per gallon, you're making 8 cents a gallon, laying out money for $1.50. Now you're laying out double of that and you're not making double profit. So that's very sickening."
Reporter: His higher purchase price and lower gas sales result in less profit. Another reason is credit card sales. Seventy percent of drivers buy gas with a credit card. So station owners have to fork over about three percent of the purchase price to Amex, Visa and MasterCard. Tom Kloza is the chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey.
Tom Kloza: "In many, many cases, the credit card companies are making more than the merchants or the gasoline dealer does."
Reporter: Kloza says the average profit for gas retailers nationwide is 15 cents.
Tom Kloza: "They're almost like sharecroppers. They only get a very small percentage of the price in their wallet and most of them have to depend on inside sales and what they sell inside a convenience store to really buoy the profits."
Reporter: At the Astoria station where Ramnarayan works 7 days a week, he sells snacks and repairs cars to cover expenses, including $13,000 a month in rent. Quitting is not an option. The former English teacher says he invested a lot of money to start the business.
Leslie Ramnarayan: "Sometimes you're forced to stay in the business, like now I'm forced to stay here. If I leave, I lose. I lose much more than I'm losing right now."
Reporter: Ramnarayan and other station owners may one day be forced out of the business, says oil analyst Tom Kloza. The typical two-island filling station is making way for corporate mega-retailers with multiple pumps, delis … and higher profits. Reporting for Columbia Radio News, I'm Mary-Rose Abraham.