I don't believe I would ever use the words Costco and short-sighted in the same sentence.
I think Real Estate is expensive and they don't want to buy more of it then is absolutely required. As someone has already stated, the margin on fuel sales is apparently pretty low so in order to make money, you gotta move a lot of it, especially if you're trying to be about the cheapest place in town. They plan it out with a big area for cars to line up going in a one-way direction towards the pumps and a then a fairly tight turn using a minimum of space for exiting. Seems like this is a pretty efficient layout.
