Jobber is an old trade word for a middleman who buys in bulk and sells it on in smaller lots. In fuel, the jobber does that with gasoline and diesel.
A jobber is the link between the refinery’s supply and the local pump. It buys fuel by the truckload at the rack and resells it to gas stations, fleets, farms, and other accounts across a region.
It exists because a refiner does not want to bill and deliver to thousands of small accounts, and those accounts cannot buy in terminal-sized loads. The jobber breaks the bulk into truckloads, runs the routes, carries the credit, and knows the territory.
The margins are thin, often a few cents a gallon, so a jobber makes its living on volume and on running a tight operation.
In useA regional jobber loads fuel each morning and delivers it to the forty stations and dozen trucking fleets it supplies.
Where the word comes from
Jobber comes from job in its old meaning of a lot of goods handled for profit. Someone who dealt in those lots was a jobber, a term used in English trade since the 1600s. The fuel jobber kept the same idea of buying wholesale and selling on.
See also Reseller, Dealer, Supplier