Diesel Roars Past $5 a Gallon (May 23, 2008)

The price of diesel #2 gas hit $5.19 a gallon in at least one Chevron gas station that I went past coming home from work. Just eight hours before when I passed it on my way to work, it was $4.99 a gallon.

Very few gas stations that I drove past had unleaded at less than $3.99 a gallon.

The price of gasoline when adjusted for minumum wage earners in California is the highest that it's ever been. While the minimum wage is $8 a hour, the $4 a gallon level means that they have to work for 30 minutes in order to earn a gallon of gas.

Today it costs $4 a gallon for unleaded. 30 years ago, when gas was about 50 cents a gallon for regular leaded, $5 filled up the old 1970 Ford Torino.

I had some dreams that I was at a service station with old fashioned gasoline pumps. It was an old Enco station with a motto "Happy Motoring." The price of diesel gas #1 that they sold there was a whopping $60.99 and 9/10ths a gallon. It was still cheaper than the Chevron gas station across the street that was selling diesel #1 for $61.99 9/10ths a gallon. A mad customer in a SUV that's was twice as tall as he had to shell out about $2,000 for just 32 gallons of gas. He had to pawn it off because he didn't have any more money and couldn't afford to drive it anymore. Too bad it didn't take diesel #2. It was selling for only $40.99 9/10ths a gallon.

Is the price of diesel #2 heading fast towards $10 a gallon? It's beginning to look rather scary. If gas hits $10 a gallon, what would the operators of the gas pumps do? The price can go only as high as $9.99 9/10ths a gallon.

I remember back in 1979 when the price of gasoline first topped $1 a gallon. Back then, there were only mechanical gas pumps that could price the gas up to 99 and 9/10ths of a cent per gallon. Once the price hit $1, some of the gasoline operators had to be creative to get around it. Some of them set the price of the gas on the pumps for half of what it really was selling for. For example, to sell gasoline for $1.02 a gallon, the gasoline operator had to set the pump's price at 51 cents a gallon. When you asked for $10.20 worth of gas to get 10 gallons of gas, the gasoline operator either told you to stop pumping at $5.10 for the total price (10.20 divided by 2), or punch in $5.10 so that the pump would let you get 10 gallons of gas for $10.20. This worked for a while, but there were some gasoline pump operators that forgot how to double and half, and some customers got 20 gallons for $10.20 instead of only 10 gallons or paying $20.40 for 20 gallons.

A few gas stations I encountered had priced the price of gas per liter or by quart. At $1.04 per gallon, it was 26 cents per quart. This was often confusing as people tried to convert liters and quarts to gallons so that they could compare its prices with the prices offered by its competetors. At the worst case, many of them were pricing the per quart gasoline higher than the service stations that were selling per half gallon.

Eventually, some service station operators bought kits that allowed them to upgrade their old fashioned mechanical pumps to go up to $3.99 a gallon, but by the time gas went past $2 a gallon, most of the gasoline pumps were now computerized, and allowing up to $9.99 9/10ths per gallon. Some of the older mechanical pumps that are still in existance are having their gears wear out when the price of gasoline goes past $4 a gallon. Now that diesel is past $5 a gallon, many of the gasoline stations that still use the pumps may either use a Sharpie to move the decimal to the right and set the pumps to 1/10th of what it's selling for to prolong the life of the mechanical pumps, replace them, or go out of business because their mechanical pumps broke down. Many of them just can't be upgraded past $4 or $5 a gallon without encountering a mechanincal failure due to fast spinning wheels and gears because the price of gasoline was never meant or predicted to go as high as $5 a gallon.

As long as gasoline is this high, wouldn't it finally make sense to get rid of the stupid 9/10ths of a cent pricing? Just price it in even cents and be done with it.

With gasoline priced this high, the mechanical pumps are having trouble selling more than $99.99 worth of gas per purchase, so the purchasers have to go back and buy more gallons to fill up their big trucks and rigs. The computerized pumps can go perhaps to $9,999.99 and up to $9.99 9/10 a gallon.

With the threat of $10 a gallon for diesel #2 looming over the horizon, what will happen to the gas station operators? How will they adjust to the fact that they need new pumps that can go up to $99.99 9/10 a gallon if the price of diesel #2 hits $10 a gallon? Will they just quit selling the diesel #2 or sell it per half gallon?

As the cost of gasoline keeps going up, up, up, it's going to make it harder on all of us to maintain a quality of living. We're now asking ourselves the next time we go to Disneyland this question: "Is this trip really necessary?"

I haven't been to L.A. since the price of gas was $1.79 a gallon, and that was three years ago. Just as well. Nothing's in Los Angeles anymore. Just a bunch of corporate-owned radio stations that don't program music the way we want.