Watching the end of gas stations


In a long life I've seen a lot of changes, and it just occurred to me that I will live to see the end of gas stations. They will become something that old-timers talk about, like eight-track tapes, or dial telephones. The young folks will have no idea, and be amazed at old photos, while the old-timers will just take it for granted.

I stopped at the QT this morning during my ride to get some coffee, and I sat at the table and watched the world go by. Cars pull in, fuel up, and go. And it's such a common thing, which I've been seeing all of my life, I wondered how I would explain it to someone who has no experience with gas stations? I'll give it a try here.

First of all to all of you old-timers out there, calm down, gas stations won't be going away anytime soon. Technology requires more than an invention or two to catch on, it requires a system, and while electric cars have been around for a while, and there are more all of the time, the system isn't quite in place yet. It's like when cars were invented, and it was much easier to feed a horse on a trip than find gasoline. Systems take a while, and once they're in place, the old system is forgotten. Who remembers leaving their horse at the livery stable when they rode into town?

As you can see in the photo that I took this morning, there's a gigantic truck filled with an extremely flammable liquid - gasoline. And of course the cars have that liquid inside of them, and that's the reason that they go there, to refill. And future generations may wonder how dangerous this was? I mean, there's enough gasoline in that truck to blow up a whole square block, I'm sure! But in my lifetime I've never seen that happen.

By the way, as of this writing, October 2021, you can't "fill up" an electric car as quickly as you can fill up the tank of a gasoline-powered car. That is, when I watched people stop, they would only have to stand there for a few minutes and they could get back on the road. No electric car can charge that fast, and to be practical, they will need to get there.

Most cars, of course, will rarely ever need to go to a station (I suppose they'll be called charging stations in the future). Speaking for myself, I have a garage where I can plug in a car, the same way that I plug in my phone, it can charge all night and I'd be good for about 99% of the trips I do. I don't have any friends left who live in Los Angeles, but I'd imagine a good overnight charge would get me there, and they would allow me to charge it overnight. Or I'd have a charger in the parking lot of the motel.

I have no great affection for gas stations, and I never developed the fascination that so many people have for gas prices. I knew a lot of people who just loved to find out where they could save on a gallon of gas, and they would go to those places, and have conversations with their friends about it. I suppose that it will be one less thing for people to do on errands, like going to the post office, or going to the bank to cash a check.

I've been around gas stations all of my life. I'm old enough to remember when there was a little cord that you ran over that went "ding!" and someone came out and pumped your gas, and checked your oil and your tires. I was one of those kids who loved the smell of gasoline (that will be difficult to explain to future generations), and I've always needed to go the bathroom. I'm old enough to remember when "pay at the pump" was new, and you could use a little plastic card to pay for it right there, without ever having to talk to anyone. The old-timers just hated that!

I sat for quite a while this morning sipping my coffee and pondering this. It was such a common sight that I can't imagine that anyone would guess that it was fascinating to me, the way that a livery stable would have been 100 years ago.
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