Car is definitely the means of transport most used by Italian people who prefer it to public transports, which allows a relaxing and comfortable journey, but in Italy still cannot guarantee that efficiency reached in other Countries. Sometimes happens that people renounce using public transports because they don’t permit them to arrive in the exactly area they have to reach: especially for the ones who work on the edge of the city or for the ones that, on the contrary, live in the edge of the city and have to go to the centre for their business, using public transports would mean being subjected to an exhausting series of connections among bus, trains and tram.

Inevitably the costs of maintenance and the fuel consume of the car are two monthly expenditures which weigh on the household balance. Apart from the few electric car available now, most of cars in Italy are powered with fuel, even if the LPG convenience is gradually pushing consumers to buy cars with a gas plant. For what regards fuel supply, LPG is now available in a quite big number of petrol stations, even not in all of them. Not considering moral choices and decisions motivated by matters of environmental sensibility, the issue which influence the choice of the car is surely the price: other cars being equal, comparing a fuel version with the LPG one, the second one will have surely a more expensive price, due to the gas plant.

An original business venture is the one taken by Mr. Baldo Pratelli, entrepreneur from Pontedera who, to resolve the problem of increasing fuel prices, bought a petrol station. This could sound like a joke, and at the beginning it’s exactly like this that it was considered by Capannoli inhabitants, but the initiative of Mr. Pratelli was a do-it-yourself solution to the issue of fuel prices, which caused a general discontent of the inhabitants of the area and of the foreigners. Mr. Pratelli then, that since the ’50 runs the father’s petrol station, became the owner of the first "white" petrol station of Alta Vadera. Over the years the petrol station had changed many petrol companies changing from Aquila to total, then MonteShell and finally Shell but in 2011 at the end of the concession with Shell, with the family support, Mr. Pratelli took over everything, inaugurating then the "Pratelli Carburanti", petrol station owned and managed by the Pratelli family.

Thanks to the independent management of the fuel supply, without any action or mediation from the petrol companies, the Pratelli Carburanti manages to offer its customers a competitive prices, weekly regulated, according to the fluctuation of the crude. All of this obviously caused the malcontent and envy of the managers of the other petrol stations who, being tied to the concessions with the petrol companies, cannot manage the prize of the fuel without companies permission.

This initiative provoked also an increase in Capannoli traffic and in the traffic of near areas, with great joy of the dealers of the area, who registered an increase in the sales, thanks to the increased number of cars passing through the main street of the city.

Article written by Serena Rigato