[synaesthetic]

Fuel costs will drop again, probably not to the $1.xx mark, but they'll drop. Fuel is just the next bubble, and all bubbles eventually pop. The speculators will push and push and push and they'll push so far people get pissed and then it'll all explode in their faces just like the last few bubbles did.

 

[tot]

In France around €1.40/L, but it has been over €1/L during last 10 years so it has not increased that much.

Evian costs maybe €0.55/1.5L bottle, much cheaper.

 

[Carmantom]

when i was 17 and pumped gas at local filling station, as I recall it was 33 cents a gallon. We gave full service and to not check and fill oil was grounds to be terminated. That was were dealers made their money (oil).

That was about 1967 and as I remember it, there were always price wars out west in Texas at mid to high 20's per gallon. Ah those were the days.
Damn! I'm getting old.

 

[terrymx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 92135011 /img/forum/go_quote.gif You guys complain about gas prices...seriously, look at the price of bottled water! It works out to be just as expensive as gas. Most bottled water is no cleaner than boiled water, especially if you live in places that have good quality water such as Vancouver. I think I saw Evian being charged over $2 at the 7-11 for a 500ml bottle.

I made the same point on the last thread about gas, except I also worked out how much it would cost for a pound of NyQuil.

 

[92135011]

Quote:

Originally Posted by terrymx /img/forum/go_quote.gif I made the same point on the last thread about gas, except I also worked out how much it would cost for a pound of NyQuil.

So how much is a pound of nyquil?

 

[MD1032]

That's why you drink tap water. It's more pure than most bottled water, and it costs way, way less.

 

[wfranklin]

My freshman year in high school (1969-1970), prices at the local Shell station in Newport Beach for regular were 29.9 cents/gallon. There's a photo in that year's yearbook as proof.

 

[synaesthetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MD1032 /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's why you drink tap water. It's more pure than most bottled water, and it costs way, way less.

The tap water in Tulsa tastes really bad. =|

So I drink beer instead. =D

 

[SuperNothing]

I remember in the mid-nineties my mother filling up and it was around .93 a gallon. Now it is around 3.60 a gallon average. However all stations in NJ are also full service by law but because we are the refinery state our prices are always lower than elsewhere because of lower shipping costs.

 

[Hi-Finthen]

I think I remember buying it for 33cents a gallon back in the day, around '67

Which I'll add, was getting pretty bad, due to recent memories at the time of it being like 26.9 cents per gallon.

Today, $3.70 per

 

[n_maher]

In the summer of 1998 I can clearly remember paying $.87 a gallon to fill up my motorcycle and being amazed at how cheap gas had remained in comparison to other commodities. It's $3.75 in my neck of the woods now and more painfully has gone up about $.75 in the last three weeks.

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

Ah, the days of gas being less than $1, back when I didn't need very much of it. Now when I'm much more frequently on the road, the price skyrockets

$3.79-3.94 for regular unleaded at the moment (depending on the station). I'm sure it'll hit over $4 shortly.

 

[AlanY]

I don't really find it useful to compare absolute gas prices, because it gives no practical reference point... it's better to compare spending on gas to people's incomes.

Going from this data:
Sperling's Best Places
it looks like the average driver in the US consumes 2.29 gallons per day. At $4/gallon, that's $3343 per year per driver.

Median personal (that's per person, not per household) income in the US is $38,611:
BBER-UNM: United States: Per Capita Personal Income

I'm not sure what the median tax rate is, but it's pretty likely that a majority of people in the US are now spending more than 10% of their after tax income on gas. That's a pretty big chunk of most people's budgets.

 

[warubozu]

Back 1986 I can remember paying around $1.09 for a gallon regular. This week a gallon of regular cost an average price of $4.32 in Maui.

 

[Uncle Erik]

In the late 1990s, when I lived in Oregon, it got as low as $0.87 per gallon. I had a '95 Escort that got 42 MPG on the highway, so I would fill up for under $10 and drove all over the Northwest. Good times.

The cheapest gas I've seen in Los Angeles lately was $3.83 in Westchester, near LMU. The highest is $4.07 and the average seems to be $3.99.

Someone earlier mentioned cheaper gas due to proximity to a refinery. Not so everywhere. Chevron has a large refinery in El Segundo with a station on the corner of their property. It is a fair assumption that costs to move gas several hundred feet are not that high. Yet this station often has the highest prices around. Strangely, the Chevron in downtown El Segundo, about a mile from the refinery, usually costs less. Go figure.

I don't mind the high prices so much. Not to light a fuse, but these prices have gotten plenty of SUVs off the road, made a lot of aggressive drivers take it down a notch and cleared out a lot of uninsured clunkers who just can't afford it. Also, the prices are making alternative transportation and fuels suddenly reasonable. That's a good thing. We didn't go back to whale oil after the light bulb, after all.