Am I right in thinking.......

[Poppinjay]

......that in a few days, all the panic buyer's tanks will still be full, the fuel stations will have been replenished and the rest of us will be able to fill up as normal.

If there isn't a supply issue and the shortage is genuinely only at the forecourts, surely the problem will be very short-lived.

Am I missing something?

Hope so. I will genuinely need to fill up by mid week or the kids won’t be going to school.

Someone shared a video on Facebook this morning of the massive queue at the local garage. Cue umbrage from all the people that had genuinely been filling up not topping up in panic. A lot of them must have been panic buyers, there’s not usually a queue first thing on a Sunday morning.

Well, I'm no expert, but I'm assuming that the process of refilling all those stations is more arduous - with reduced HGV capacity - than just refilling the normal number that would be dry.

Not that that needed to be the case.

Boy can't go to school tomorrow as taxi company phoned to say they can't get the fuel.

I have to use about a quarter of a tank tomorrow or let down a child with complex needs at a very important time for them. I won't have much left after that so will struggle to get to work after that.

MNers often have a perspective on these things that I have missed so I'd really like to know if my optimism is misplaced.

Nope cos there's loads of people on another thread saying they've got enough petrol to last 2/3 days so those people will need to find petrol then so it will continue. And those people who filled right up will continue to top up when they can.

I'm not sure how quickly fuel stations are replenished but there can't be that much room to fill in people's car tanks by now so surely the demand will drop quite quickly, even if people try to stay topped up for a while.

How long would it take the fuel stations to return to normal levels if panic buying stopped now?