When I was a kid in the 60's, I recall my dad was paying about 25 cents per gallon.

When I started driving in the mid 70's it was well under a buck. By the late 70's and 80's it was over a buck.....and it keeps on going up.

Not quite. I worked at a Shell station in high school. In the 70's, gas was about .35/ gallon, until the oil crunch in 74. Then went up to about .60 cents. Went higher when we were forced to by unleaded gas to about .80. Gas did hit $1.00 in the 80's but went back to .80-1.00 in the mid to late 80's. I remember in about 1975 when gas hit .50. People were pissed. The good ole days.

50 cents in 1975 was the equivalent of about $2.40 today. Average regular gasoline price in U.S. today is $2.66.

I get that. But that wasn't the statement I was responding to.

I remember 29 cents per gallon as a child back in the '60s. Your gas was pumped for you back then and your windshield was also cleaned for you.

The 70's as well. Also oil check and tire fill if the air looked low. Then "self service" hit. Remember when stations had a choice of full service and self service? You got a 10% discount if you pumped your own.

19.9 cents a gallon, in Las Vegas, in 1961. My parents' mortgage payment was $70/month.

The first new car I bought, in 1972, cost $1,999, for a VW Bug.

>> "The first new car I bought, in 1972, cost $1,999, for a VW Bug."

Slug bug! Bam!

First car I bought: Oct 67, $1050 for a 64 TR-4 in Provo. Gas-n-Go in Orem, about 28 cents. $1.79 for Sizzler steak dinner. $25/mo for a room in a big house with 8 guys...on University Ave.TMI..sorry.

When I started to drive it was maybe $.30 a gallon. I remember being horrified when it hit $.50.

It was Costco at Southcenter Mall. Regular gas was .77 a gallon once. Can't remember the year, but I was driving my Thunderbird and I owned it from 1992 to 1999/2000. This was back when gas was regularly .99 a gallon. It would regularly go down to .89 and up to $1.09 and we'd all freak out then back down. Then I remember hearing rumors of the gas companies wanting to get it to be around $2.50 a gallon, but the consumer wouldn't stand for that, so the rumor was that they'd hike it up to $5.00 a gallon, THEN LOWER it to around $2.50 and everybody would be cool with it.

That's about what happened isn't it?

Somewhere in my collection of photos is one of me filling my 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner at a local gas station. That would have been about 1971.

I don't know how whoever took the picture got the car and me and a signboard for gas at <1.00 a gallon (I think it says $.70 but I'd have to find the photo.)

IIRC, the Roadrunner got about 9 miles per gallon; beep/beep

Plus, you had to run Premium in that RoadKill.

23c a gallon when I moved to Utah in 1970.

I even remember "Esso" gas stations.

The issue is for us, what are we paying now? I just filled at $2.279 at a Massachusetts Costco. My heart goes out to you poor folks paying through the nose in Taxifornia.

You can load the "GasBuddy" app on your smart phone, and see what prices are in your area (GPS locator on, of course), maybe save a few bucks. If you register with a username, you can post prices yourself. There's also a full website with articles and a discussion board which is, unfortunately, horribly abused with Ot rants.

19.9c in 1960 when there was a "gas war" going on, normal was about 25c.

Trying to remember, but Can't what it was when I first started driving in Minnesota; Driver Training was still part of the public school curriculum then (Duluth East H.S., graduated in '64), IDK if it still is there or not, I guess most schools have opted out favoring private d. training.

Was it a Horror Story for regular teachers?

I remember making only 1 mistake on my Driving Test, I remember it as a uniformed guy, but if road trooper = ?

that was first/last time I ever had to take road test, when I moved back to Washington, they didn't require it again...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2019 05:24PM by GNPE.

If you took it in MN you took it from a trooper. They administered the tests. Duluth East is still there, but doubt they teach drivers ed. The great nephews in Minneapolis had to take it at AAA.

Brigham City. I remember it was 18 cents a gallon.

I remember 60¢, but I wasn't driving yet - I'm sure it was lower in my lifetime. They still pump your gas for you in NJ (I think), so even after the dollar tip for the pump jockey, you came out ahead.

Edited for clarity and to add something I just forgot. Damn.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2019 08:09PM by Beth.

This makes it look like gas was cheaper back in the good old days.
Minimum wages were about 50¢ an hour so you could get about two gallons of gas for an hour of work m
Now the minimum wage is $7.35 or more depending where you live, and gas is about $2.75 a gallon, again depending where you live, so you can buy over 3 gallons for an hour of work.

I like making these comparisons, just to make sense of the world.

Nah. When I worked at a gas station, minimum wage was $1.70. Gas was about .50/gal. Meaning you could buy 3.5 gallons for an hours worth of work. About like today. Minimum wage was $.50 in 1946. You sure you were buying gas then?

Remember my dad looking for gas at different stations so he could get the lowest price while we were on vacation. He finally got it for .25 cents per gallon. His salary back in those days was about $5,000 a year.

Today I paid $2.41 and my dad isn't worrying about gas prices any more. He's gliding around on his cloud.

Wow - gas in the US is pretty cheap! Here in Australia we pay about $A1.50/litre - equivalent to about $US5.60/gallon.

In the UK and Europe it is perhaps twice that again!

Hence bicycles and public transport...

oldpobot ( )

A major reason for differences in price is the US is the state and local taxes.

Feds add about 24 cents per gallon
State taxes range from about 15 cents in Alaska to 58 cents in Pennsylvania, with an average of about 30 cents.

Taking a quick look at Vancouver Canada, their gas costs about 1.50 Canadian, converting to US dollars and gallons, that's about 7.50 US.

Without looking too far, my guess there is a lot of taxes add to the price you pay for gas at the pump.

I'm in Manitoba at the moment. Gas here is CDN$1.12 / liter give or take.

A liter is 0.264 gallons, so that converts to CDN$4.31 per gallon

Current exchange rate is CDN$ x 0.76 = US$

So, gas in Manitoba is CDN$4.31 / gal or US$3.28 (not US$7.00+) people are notoriously bad at guessing currency conversion. It pays to do the math.

to a certain extent, high gas prices serve a public good by encouraging alternate transport, but many people can't use for a variety of reasons, they're stuck.

In Philly, we owned a car but rarely drove it. Public transit is 24/7/365. When I was stationed in San Diego, I was shocked that we'd have to buy a car. That we couldn't afford. But car we bought.

I think it was the summer before 9/11. Gas was $0.99/gallon at most places where I live. We'll never see those prices again, sadly.

You should try the UK here with around $6.25 a gallon.

In 1970 I was delivering gasoline and diesel to farmers for the local CO-OP and regular gas was $0.39/Canadian gallon. That would be about $0.30/US gallon.

If I remember right, Co-Op gas was about 15% cheaper than pump gas-right? I know that US Farm Diesel is about .$80/gal less than station diesel right now.

I can’t remember what the price per litre was. I’m thinking maybe 37 cents.

But my first car filled up on about $14 Canadian, from being on empty.

Edit: I can’t remember if that was per litre, or if we were still on gallons back then.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2019 12:15PM by Greyfort.

Anyone remember the Unleaded switch? When new cars had to use unleaded which was about 10-15 cents more a gallon than regular? When they sold those plastic nozzle adapters where you could fit the larger regular nozzle into the smaller gas fillers of the unleaded cars? They lasted about 2 ears before they made them illegal.

I don’t remember the dates this was happening, but I do remember how much lighter the car handled without all the lead in the gas!

Right? And much easier to pump, too.

Back in my day ... geezer fest here.

I started driving in the Spring after the first Arab Oil Embargo in fall of 1973. If I remember right gas was about 55 cents a gallon then, oil had gone from about $3 a barrel to about four times that amount. The price of gas went up and stayed up, when the price of oil came down (amazing how that works isn't it - for all you free market types who believe in unregulated capitalism.) I got paid $2.30 an hour working at McDonalds and I would fill my tank with a $5 dollar bill. My chevy got about 13 mpg.

I think I paid $4.15 on I-15 a couple of days ago in CA. I like to travel and have bought gas in New Zealand, UK, Scandinavia, Iceland. -- US gas prices even in CA and other urban areas are pretty low compared to most of the world.

Back in the dark ages in the 60s and early 70s, service stations would have gas wars where they cut the price to almost free. They also used to give away drinking glass sets and trading stamps for buying gas. I still have some of the lovely 60s avacado green gas station glasses my mom loved.

$.23 or 23 cents a gallon in 1960’s. But my salary was $68 a week. That was before unleaded. Also the gas was pumped for you, the windshield washed, oil checked and tire pressure checked. Oh sigh those were the days!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2019 05:36PM by wondering.

I'll add my gasoline price story. I got married the Friday of Labor Day Weekend 1970 in Southern Idaho. Decided to honeymoon by driving hours to go to Yellowstone Park, which we did. We were poor and penny pinchers. As we were coming out the South Entrance of the park to head back to Provo, we were very low on gas and the gas station there was pricey..IIRC around .40 per gallon! The horrors! New hubby decided we could get it cheaper in Jackson Hole and thought we could make it there on the gas we had. I swear we were on fumes by the time we rolled into a station. But, hey, we might have saved a buck!

I've visited Yellowstone regularly since the early 1960s. Gasoline used to be considerably more expensive in and around the park, like 50 to 100% higher than normal prices elsewhere. Now it seems to be 10 to 15% higher, if that. I don't know what change, but not complaining.

It was 20-something/gallon when I started buying my own gas in the late '60s.

My college roommate used to annoy me because (among other things) he always needed to stop for gas when he drove, then he'd only get a dollar's worth. I'd say, "You know, you'd need to stop for gas less often if you'd get more at one time."

He'd reply, "But I might need that money for something else."

"Yeah, like for more gas in a couple of days. Tell ya what -- spend another dollar now, and if you need it later for some non-gas thing I'll give you a buck."

He never took me up on it. And I stopped riding with him.

Oh, and he's a TBM these days.

But the absolute lowest I've ever "paid" was free. On my mission one of the members gave us a barrel and hand pump to carry in the back of our church-issued truck, and he'd fill it with "farm gas" from his bulk tank. Very against the law, but we were doing the Lord's work, right? So it was okay.

28 cents a gallon, late 60s, scraped together from change in my purse before I ran out of gas. The car was my beloved blue 60 Valiant, given to me by my aunt after she won a Cadillac in a church raffle!

My first car was my grandmother's Oldsmobile. Loved that car.

Now I'm driving my mother's Oldsmobile. I wouldn't mind driving her Olds till I can no longer push the gas pedal. It is a cream puff.

I'm sad they don't make Oldsmobile anymore.

25 cents per gallon. Tom's U'serve. 1200 S. State Street Salt Lake.
Could cheaply drag state street all night in the old 289 V8 bronco.

The cost of everything in our society is based on energy prices, and most of that on the cost of gasoline. The value of the dollar goes down over time, but the value of gasoline remain relatively the same. With that being the case, the price of gasoline hasn't changed much since the early 1960s. But everything else, including the value of the dollar, fluctuates.