Yes they do. But the reason brands have been able to adopt the label without changing their additive package is they already met the requirements. They just didn't pay the money.

There's a difference between "Bob's Gas Station" and quality fuels that just don't happen to participate in TT. For example, Kwik Trip is not TT, but generally has a higher-quality product than TT Shell, as evidenced by tuning logs I've taken a recent interest in reviewing from all over the place. Costco was (and still is) using 5x the TT additive requirements before they joined the program. TT is a better marketing investment for Costco than it is for larger brands because the overwhelming majority of the licensing fees are based on number of locations, and Costco has a very (comparatively) small number of extremely high-volume stations.

BP is actually back. They adjusted their marketing budget. Their website hasn't been updated yet, and still describes their additive package as exceeding all TT requirements, while acknowledging that they don't participate in the program. They didn't have to change anything about their product, just decide that they wanted to pay the couple billion in fees to use the sticker.

What old rumors? The statements came from BP themselves. They did not initially participate in the participate in the program when it was first launched, even though their product exceeded the standard. Then they paid the licensing fees and added the stickers to their pumps. Then a decade or so later, they stopped paying and removed the stickers. Five years after that they've started paying again and the stickers have reappeared--go to your local BP, I bet you'll see them. Other than normal evolution/improvement of the additive package over time, their product didn't change over the past 20 years. The only thing that did was whether they chose to pay the substantial annual fee to be part of the cool kids club.

 

Sam's $3.75. Down a penny.

 

Went up here overnight, about 20c a gallon

 

Interesting. They must have been pressured to pay up again.

What I find interesting, at least in my area, gas prices are the same between TT and non-TT. The Thornton's is across the street from a Shell, both are always the same price. Another corner is a Speedway and a Mobil and again, both are always the same price. When driving past, no one seems to really care, as all are very busy.

 

I'm going to stock up....

 

Top Tier gas pump stickers didn't exist until a few years after my 2000 Tundra came off the assembly line. My mother's early 70s era Toyota Corolla ran perfectly for hundreds of thousands of miles absent Top Tier stickers on gas pumps. Tigers, little orange ***** for display on radio antennas, and the man who wears a star sold a lot of gas.

 

 

There, I corrected your post above. Gas prices were NOT worse 4 yrs ago.

 

Same. From $5.70 to $5.90, same as it was last week.

 

My local BP

On 4/25/26


5/13/26


The first one is the X5. The tank is about 20 gallons

 

I was so happy to see 4.99 then I scrolled further down....

I wonder if someone going to tell us gas prices were much better a month ago vs now.

 

Wrong. They were significantly worse where I live....but not necessarily by a huge amount. The average price of 87 Octane for Top-Tier brands was over $5.00...some high-priced stations were $5.50 or above. The average right now in my area is maybe $4.50...with only a few stations pushing $5.00.

 

That's because you were probably putting decent gas in the tank that, in effect, WAS Top-Tier, just not officially labelled as such back then. But, even back then, the same basic rule applied....the big name-brands generally had better additive-packages than the cheap Ma-and-Pa-stuff. At one time, back then, Mobil had the best detergent package, but, today, Shell and Chevron do.

 

don't think the top tier labeling has much to do with gas prices.

 

hmmm