TL;DR: When a Brisbane price cycle peaks, the majors don’t jump together — there’s a pecking order, and the feed shows it. This lap, Ampol and its EG Ampol network moved their metro median to 199.9 c/L first, around 28 July. Reddy Express (the Shell-branded old Coles Express) followed on 31 July; 7-Eleven and Caltex only completed the jump this weekend. BP is the slowest major — its median just reached the top but 44% of its stations are still short of it. And the independents — Liberty, Pearl Energy, U-Go, Metro, Freedom — never joined the hike at all. Their medians sit 10–14 cents under the pack, and the cheapest of them is still 178.5.
Everyone knows the majors put prices up in a pack near the top of a cycle. What people argue about is who leads — and that’s a checkable claim, not a vibe. So I pulled every ULP price-change report from the Brisbane-metro stations over the last fortnight, grouped by brand, and watched each brand’s median climb toward the 199.9 ceiling to see the order they arrived.
The order they arrived
Here’s who moved first, by the date each brand’s metro median first reached the top of the market (≈198 c/L or higher):
- 28 July — Ampol and EG Ampol. The Ampol network led, both banners crossing on the same day.
- 31 July — Reddy Express (Shell-branded).
- 2 August — 7-Eleven and Caltex completed the jump this weekend.
- Not yet — BP. Its median only just touched the top, and it still has the most stragglers of any major.
That’s the restoration in slow motion: the Ampol group sets the ceiling, the others follow over the next four to five days, and the last major is nearly a week behind the first.
Who’s actually at the top right now
Timing tells you who led; the current snapshot tells you who’s committed. This is the share of each brand’s metro stations already pricing at 199.9 or above, as of this morning:
The six big banners — 7-Eleven, Ampol, BP, Reddy Express, EG Ampol, Caltex — all now carry a 199.9 median. But the depth varies: Ampol (89%) and EG Ampol (86%) are almost fully at the ceiling, while BP (56%) and Caltex (51%) still have roughly half their sites a few cents short. If you’re loyal to one brand, that spread is the difference between “always pays peak” and “sometimes hasn’t caught up yet.”
The independents didn’t blink
The more interesting half of the table is the brands that aren’t on the chart’s high end. Not one of these has a median at the peak:
- Pearl Energy — 185.5 (cheapest site 178.5)
- Liberty, U-Go, Freedom Fuels — 189.5
- Metro Fuel — 189.9
- United — 195.9 (the only mid-tier major-ish brand still visibly holding back)
That’s a 10 to 14 cent gap between the independent medians and the 199.9 majors, and the cheapest independents are a full 21 cents under the ceiling. They’re not lagging because they’re slow — they simply run a flatter price and skip the top of the cycle. Every peak, they’re where the value is.
What it means for you
Brand loyalty costs the most at exactly this point in the cycle. If your usual servo is an Ampol, EG Ampol or Reddy Express, it’s almost certainly at 199.9 today. A BP or Caltex is a coin-flip. And a Liberty, Pearl, U-Go or Metro is very likely still 10–20 cents cheaper — right now, this morning, for the same regular unleaded.
The move isn’t to memorise this table — brands reshuffle every lap. It’s to check the map instead of the logo. Open Pinly Fuel and sort by price; at a peak, the cheapest pin is almost never the brand on your keyring.
How we measure: Brisbane-metro stations within a box around the CBD, QLD Government price feed, regular unleaded (ULP/91), obvious data errors excluded. “Order they arrived” uses each brand’s daily median of reported prices, which is noisier than the whole-market series, so we read it for sequence, not to the decimal. Current shares are from each station’s latest reported price on 2 August 2026.