Price per gallon in 1972- 38 cents. What you payed $0.38 for in 72, would be $8.97 today. Not bad.
shareIn both episodes, the radio gives out, and the car is disabled. I consider "The Search" in which Malloy crashes the cruiser into the woods, with the radio down and fighting for his life, to be the best of this show. 10**********.
shareI wish that we could edit our posts. I said $.0.38 in '72 would be $8.97 today. WRONG! I rechecked it. Today it would be $2.07. Sorry 'bout that. And I put a new topic under reply. Oooops!
shareYeah, i wondered about your math. (Or maybe MY math...) :-p
sharenot on the direct subject but i was 14 in 1972 there was this danish guy (think, Mr. Hanson on Little House on the Prairie)that made homemade donuts and he'd drive around the neighborhood selling his delish donuts, we were last on his route around 4pm or so and he'd always lower the price to a nickel a donut to get rid of them. mmmmmmm, 5 for .25 cents, soooo good. guess that also explains why the kids in my apartment complex were fatter than most!
share Love that story. That reminds me of the late '80s when I lived right by a Mrs. Fields shop. Right before closing time each night they lowered the price of cookies to a quarter. I'd rather have the donuts in the early '70s.
Mag, Darling, you're being a bore.
I wish that we could edit our posts
I was watching an Adam-12 from 1970. In a chase scene, it showed a service station. (Shell) There FULL SERVICE price was $ .29. (Could not see any self-serve price.)
I feel sure you added the $.38 per gallon, and the inflation factor together to get your (current today's price of) $2.07 per gallon of fuel.
You forgot one factor. Remember when fuel was skyrocketing almost everyday? BOTH state & federal taxes also went up. When the fuel giants were adding pennies to each gallon of fuel, Our government was also. Then and oh so Slowly, the oil / fuel producers Have lowered there prices...but our government (of course) has not lowered the tax per gallon.
Please do the math again and this time add in state & federal taxes. (Maybe post two or three states just for comparison.)
It is difficult for me to believe that since the invention of the auto, the price of a gallon of fuel stayed under 30 cents per gallon until the beginning of the 1970's.
good point, i'm in california, state and federal taxes add .71 cents per gallon to the cost of gas. (think i'm accurate in that.)
sharejust wanted to add the cost of a pack of cigarettes in 1972 was .32 cents. New York currently charges 4.35 a pack in taxes.
shareW0W - You are right! Tobacco tax IS out-of-control there in New York. I just read that New York, New York even placed a city tax on tobacco, making the total TAX on One Package to $5.85.
My first package was bought in 1977 from a vending machine for $.50. No idea as to how much of that was tax.
Today one package of name brand costs $7.50 with $1.66 of that is excise tax. (Then retailers charge sales tax on the full $7.50, so I pay sales tax on the added $1.66 tax)
Maybe the tax system could use an overhaul???
Just did a tax search. Federal tax on UNLEADED fuel is 18.4 cents per Each Gallon of fuel. In addition, each state has it's own tax rate...Plus some County's also add there tax. (I did not find any City's charging fuel tax, but give them time) In CA, they charge 69.0 cents per gallon, for a Total Tax of 87.4 cents per gallon JUST IN TAX! (Diesel is $.244 + $.795 for a total of $1.039 tax alone in CA)
Other states...
Alaska 26.4 cents per gallon unleaded.
New York 69.6 cents per gallon unleaded.
New Mexico 37.3 cents per gallon unleaded.
Kansas 43.4 cents per gallon unleaded.
Virginia 38.6 cents per gallon unleaded.
Florida 53.5 cents per gallon unleaded.
Remembering that Adam-12 was filmed in CA, the posted signs must have included 5 to 10 cents a gallon tax at that time.
No time needed. If you're looking for a city charging a tax, always start with Chicago...
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_l ist/vehicle_fuel_tax.html
And that's what they admit to. There's probably more when you factor in the under the table fees the politicians get.
There wasn't self service in 1970. I started driving in 1972 and there wasn't self service then, although some customers did pump their own gas most stations didn't want customers to pump gas. I believe it was the late 70's when self service began.
I paid $.35 to $.40 a gal back then except during a gas price war when it dropped to $.25 gal. About 1979 it went over $1.00 a gal.
Full service was the way gas was sold everywhere I ever traveled until long after this series left the air. I did get around to almost every state in those days, at some point.
When Dad pulled into a gas station, we kids might get out to stretch our legs and buy a pop from the pop machine outside the station. Gas stations were not food stores then, either. Inside, you could maybe buy some oil or other car things but not much other than that. I would say most had two vending machines, one for pop, one for cigarettes.
During the time Adam-12 was on the air, I remember my aunt telling us about "gas wars" in Detroit. Competing stores on a given corner would keep undercutting the other guy's price, so if you showed up at the right time, you might get gas for 18¢ a gallon. Next day, it would be back up to the usual 28 to 31¢ or so.
I believe that in 1972, self-service gasoline was non-existent, or virtually so. Gas prices did not go crazy until the first oil crisis in 1973. Only then did gas station owners start moving towards self-service.
sharelol That's because, prior to the Arab oil embargo of '73, there was no such thing as self serve.
The '72 gas tax in MN was about $0.08. which is equal to $0.46 in 2014 dollars. The gas tax today is $0.28. Federal tax in '72 $0.04, equal to $0.23 today. Federal gas tax today, unchanged for 20 year, is $0.18.4.
In other words, in 2014 dollars, state and federal tax, here in MN, was $0.69 per gallon and today we only pay $0.46.4 per gallon.
And, difficult as it may be for you to believe, gas was $0.36 per gallon in 1972. And then there were the gas wars....
Well now, let me think ... I was 24 in 1972 and I was making 4.50/hr. Gas was 36-38cents a gallon, true. Now it is 2014 the job that I was doing in 1972 pays 28/hr today. Now do your gas calculations. Oh, wait! One more thing. The apartment I rented in San Francisco in 1972 is still rented out in 2014. In 1972 the rent on that one bedroom with full dining and full living room, enclosed porch and one-car garage was 160/mo which I split with a roomie. TODAY rent on the SAME, NOT renovated apartment is $3975/month. NOW go figure what gas would be today with that type of inflation. Granted it was SF and Adam-12 was LA, but...
Life is a journey not a destination. Fear nothing.
You are able to edit you posts.
shareAt the discount stations I was going to in '72, the average was 29.9 cents.
You had to be in the boonies to pay more than .34 then!
$0.38 in 72 is $8.97 today. I hate math, so I got a inflation calculator , free online. We pay $3.75 for gas in Massachusetts. Imagine $8.97 for a gallon of gas. I'd be doing more walking, & far less driving.
shareThirty eight cents is equal to $1.08 in 2013 dollars. Just a few years earlier, during "gas wars", I remember the price of regular being 19.9.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
[deleted]
You Are SOOOOO Wrong!!!!
In New York, and California for example, the state & federal TAX ALONE is almost $.90 a gallon. That IS before ANY county or city tax. Please take the time and read the 4 or 5 post I have here. It will explain much of the fuel cost is tax.
I am sooooo right. I wasn't living in New York or California so whatever their prices were doesn't matter. Plus, I said a few years earlier. Regardless, in the US, a gallon of regular was $0.36 a gallon in '72.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
I started driving in 1987. A gallon of self serve gas on Long Island, NY at Amoco was .79 cents. HESS next door was 89 (the going rate). We'd spend the extra 10 cents because Amoco always had a line. Point being, 79 or 89 cents a gallon was still pocket change in 1987, even for a teenager. Now gas is pushing $4 in NY. To fill the tank is a pretty big expense, even for an adult. Gas has definitely outpaced inflation.
I remember when gas got down to 80-90 cents just back in 1998-1999. That was mind blowing
shareThat really was cheap fuel! If it sold for $.80 a gallon, remember that the tax on each gallon of fuel was about $.45. (depending on your state) So, the fuel itself would have sold for only $.35 a gallon. (and even a Texas oil man was our president about the time of those cheap prices)
shareBill Clinton was not a Texsux oil man. smh
share[deleted]
Actually, it would be $2.17.
shareI remember paying 19 cents a gallon in 1972. At the time I was driving a new Toyota which I could fill up for about $2 and it would last me a week. Sadly about a year later gas was up to about 50 cents a gallon and just kept on going up.
share