Longford's queue for fuel - Lanesboro - "People even have drums in their car boots!"

With the current panic buying of fuel being likened to that of the toilet paper shortage during Covid, the sudden surge in demand for petrol and diesel has seen many service stations run dry, with some even selling 2-3 days worth of fuel in less than 24 hours. 

Following “fairly chaotic” scenes yesterday, Casserly’s Spar in Lanesboro was one of the service stations whose supply ran out yesterday evening. Diesel went first followed quickly by petrol just an hour later. 

Read: 2 women charged over viral Longford Post Office brawl involving alleged scissors

Manager of Casserly’s Spar, Derek Casserly, spoke to the Longford Leader just as a fuel lorry was leaving the forecourt this morning, Friday April 10. 

“We’re only after getting the fuel delivery there this morning,” he explains. “We've been out since about 5pm yesterday. It was fairly chaotic here yesterday as well. There were queues going down the road, so we ended up running out of diesel at around 4.30pm and then the petrol was gone about 5.30pm."

"The fuel lorry is just after coming here this morning. We were blessed to get a delivery because only a few loads got out of Dublin this morning. We're after getting 14,000 litres of diesel. I don't know how long it'll last; we sold a lot yesterday.”

With some fuel stations imposing a purchase limit, Casserly’s have decided against implementing any such measures for now.  

Derek explained, “People are panicking; there’s a lot of that, a lot of panic. You can see some people have drums in their car boots as well. We were thinking of maybe capping it, but I don’t know. It's hard to manage that so we'll see.

"We'll see how today goes. It's very unknown at the minute.”