Eat your heart out....gas 23cents/gallon

[boxermania]

Yep, that's what regular was then, when I landed in Boston, Mass in January 64'. Hmmm, that was almost 45 years ago and the vehicles have been getting larger and larger since then.......I wonder where are we headed....

[NAIAD]

When I drove a tanker for ARCO in 1971 I think the best price I charged to any account was for one of our contracts with Douglas County, Nevada. Price? 13.7 for regular...17.7 for premium! Those were the good ol' days fer shure!

BJ

PS. I'm no longer associated with the petroleum industry, so please, no flames!

[Buckster]

Sad thing is when I moved to VA in '99, there was a gas station selling for .99 a gal. consistantly. Way less than I was paying in FL.
Nine years later and it's 3.25. That's a pretty steep increase.

[Shaman]

What was your hourly wage that year?

[NAIAD]

Good question!

But I don't recall . Would guess around 3.50-4 bucks an hour or so for driving a tanker truck...but that's a SWAG.

I do know that I was buying a new car every year, traveled whenever/wherever we wanted. Spouse worked too, so we had money to "burn". For sure we never thought about the cost of gasoline, nor was the price involved in decision making about heading off to LA or San Fran for a few days.

Now, I make sure to consolidate my errand days to minimize gas usage. And we live 9 miles from town.

Guess back in the good ol' days we didn't realize how good we had it!

Ciao! BJ

[TonyT607]

I remember in High School ('75 - '79) I could fill the tank in my '68 Beetle for about $3 and change.....

[taosports]

....I wonder where are we headed....

Today, in Gorda, California (Highway 1 on the coast south of Monterey/Big Sur) regular gas is over $5.00 per gallon.

[boxermania]

Shaman

My first job in the US was at Stevens Supermarket, long gone, in Miami, Fl during the summer as a bag boy......making $1.15 an hour.....heck that was money then for me.....not to count the 25 to 75 cent tips that I made during my 3 to 4 hours work. Hogs Heaven.....

Then I worked at:

Mobil Gas Station
Foreign car garage
Midas muffler
Movie projectionist at night
U-Haul Company
Chevron Gas Station
Dow Chemical....for as long as I can remember
Used car salesman
Tax consultant
Dow Credit Union Comptroller
Elliott Company
ECI
Chevron-Phillips
MES - Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding
and back.....with ECI

but not for long as I don't want to get as old and cantankerous as CycleRob......

[Biff's R]

Al,
When you were at Dow, did you ever have the pleasure of traveling to their research/tech facility in Granville, OH? It is about 5 miles from my house.

[Shaman]

Shaman

My first job in the US was at Stevens Supermarket, long gone, in Miami, Fl during the summer as a bag boy......making $1.15 an hour.....heck that was money then for me.....not to count the 25 to 75 cent tips that I made during my 3 to 4 hours work. Hogs Heaven.....

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Wage: What cost $1.15 in 1964 would cost $7.69 in 2007.
Gas: What cost $.24 in 1964 would cost $1.61 in 2007.

But as a percentage of wage?
Gas/Wage - 1964: 15%
Gas/Wage - 2007: 21%

Only 5% difference.
But hey. 5% can be a lot for some/most people.

As a divisible?
Wage/Wage: 7.69/1.15=6.9
Gas/Gas: 1.61/.24=6.7

Pretty close.
All just numbers.

But the reality for people is that the current gas price far outstrips inflation.
In 1968 gas was $.25-$.30
In 1995 gas was $1.15-$1.30 (matching inflation almost exactly)
In 2005 gas was $2.27 (while the inflation value should have been $1.51)
In 2007 gas was $3.15 (while the inflation value should have been $1.61)

So the current cost of gas is 2x what it should be if it were matching inflation.
People are spending 2x what they would otherwise be expected to pay.
Definitely a 'budget buster'.

ALTHOUGH! Depending on what you are driving, you probably get 2x the MPG out of a modern car over the 1960s version.
So, is it a wash?

Man, numbers are fun.

I think the crux is that many more people are 'in the market' now and drive up the price of oil as a commodity.
Read recently that the US consumes 21M barrels a day, but the commodity market in the US trades 600M barrels a day.
That is just electronic swapping of speculative notes raising the price on each swap.

[CycleRob]

A Used car salesman ?????

(cough . . . . cough)

.

[RForestR]

Here in souhern Ontario gas is $1.08/litre for regular, and in the $1.17/litre neighbourhood for premium...and that's cheap compared to northern Ontario or the East coast of the country where I hear it is $1.20/litre (unverified...but from a couple of solid sources that have been to each locale recently)

When you consider that the CDN dollar is now at par with the US greenback (hmmm...that can't be a good leading indicator...) that makes gas here similar to the price in California as quoted by toasports.

All the more reason to leave the cage parked and ride. Now, if we could only do something about global warming and rid oursleves of the 3 feet of smow outside today...

Cheers,
Chris