How Did That Happen?

This week I look at gas stations. Come along for the ride this week as I ask, gas stations, how did that happen?

Most of the world calls fuel petrol. The idea of fuel being called gas remains in North America. Literally on Wikipedia it says “the rest of the English speaking world calls it petrol which felt like a subtle shot at us over here. 

“Vintage fuel pumps and pickup trucks. Shot in Infrared, light grain.”

In the UK, New Zealand, and South Africa a filling station is called a garage or a service station. Australians also call it a servo, which sounds so Australian.

In india, pakistan and Bangladesh they call them petrol pump or petrol bunk. In Japan they call them gasoline stands. Which sounds right for some reason.

• The UK has 8,385 filling stations as of 2019,[1] down from about 18,000 in 1992[2] and a peak of around 40,000 in the mid-1960s.
• The US had 114,474 stations in 2012, according to the US Census Bureau, down from 118,756 in 2007 and 121,446 in 2002.[3][4][5]
• In Canada, the number is on the decline. As of December 2008, 12,684 were in operation, significantly down from about 20,000 stations recorded in 1989.[6]
• In Japan, the number dropped from a peak of 60,421 in 1994 to 40,357 at the end of 2009.[7]
• In Germany, the number dropped down to 14,300 in 2011.[8]
• In China, according to different reports, the total number of gas/oil stations (at the end of 2018) is about 106,000.[9]
• India—60,799 (as of November 2017)
• Russia—there were about 25,000 stations in the Russian Federation (2011)
• In Argentina, as of 2021, there are more than 5000 stations.

       Service Stations and Filling Stations

Before there were filling stations, consumers bought gasoline out of a barrel at the grocery or hardware store. But the new market for gas and consumer desire to buy gas more easily soon led to a landscape littered with gas stations.

In the early years of motoring, before dedicated gasoline stations existed, motorists bought gasoline from hardware stores, general stores, pharmacies, and even blacksmiths. So you could pick up your gas for your car the same place you get your prescriptions. 

These businesses had pre-existing relationships with the refineries through their sale of kerosene, used for stoves and as a lighting fuel. Stored in five-gallon cans stacked curbside or in large above-ground tanks, the fuel was poured into the automobile’s gas tank using a funnel with a chamois as a filter.

Due to fire danger and a series of unfortunate mishaps, public concern and regulators forced the sale of gasoline to dedicated retail facilities outside of city centers, creating a new type of business called the filling station. 

Both the filling station and the gas pump would evolve into what we now know as the modern gas station.

Several locations around the United States claim to be the site of the nation’s (possibly even the world’s) first gasoline station, known to motorists at the time as filling stations. 

According to the 1994 book “The Gas Station in America” by John Jakle and Keith Sculle, “Where and when the first gasoline station appeared is difficult to establish since various types of ‘stations’ appeared on the American scene between 1907 and 1913.” 

The First Filling Station

In 1913, Gulf Refining Company opened the world’s first drive-in gas station at Baum Boulevard and St Clair’s Street. 

Baum Boulevard was then already known as “automobile row” because of the many car dealerships lining the street. Drivers could pull right in to the “Good Gulf Gasoline” station with their new vehicles and fill ’er up.

The station offered free air and water, and sold the country’s first commercial road maps.In addition to selling gasoline, it offered crankcase service, tire installation, and free road maps, air, and water to motorists. 

This was also the first architect-designed station. On its first day, the station sold 30 gallons of gasoline at 27 cents per gallon. On its first Saturday, Gulf’s new service station pumped 350 gallons of gasoline.

Bertha Benz

Bertha Benz

Bertha Benz refilled the tank of the first automobile driven across country at the city pharmacy in Wiesloch, Germany, on Aug. 5, 1888. She was driving the newly constructed Patent Motorwagen automobile from Mannheim to Pforzheim with her 13- and 15-year-old sons as passengers, to prove to her husband Karl that his invention was marketable. The car ran not on gasoline but on highly volatile petroleum ether, which pharmacies stocked.

Brief timeline of gas/filling station openings

• 1905 – The first dedicated gas station is established in St. Louis, Missouri at 420 South Theresa Avenue
• 1907 – The first service station is installed by Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) in Seattle, Washington, at what is now Pier 32.
• 1909 – The oldest existing gas station in the United States is Reighard’s Gas Station in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
• 1913 – The Gulf Refining Company opened the world’s first drive-in gas station at the corner of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair’s Street.

I saw a video that said gas stations make up 30% of stores in America. Im not sure if every “convenience store” has gas pumps tho. And in the video they showed convenience stores without gas pumps. So this stat means…next to nothing.

“Vintage fuel pumps and pickup trucks. Shot in Infrared, light grain.”

                                          Gas Pumps

Before the dawn of the filling station, hardware stores and general stores stored kerosene in large tanks to be ladled into customer containers. It was 1885 in Fort Wayne, Indiana where kerosene gas pump inventor, S.F. Bowser sold his newly invented kerosene pump to the owner of a grocery shop. 

This solved the messy problem of a storekeeper ladling flammable liquid into whatever random container the customer brought in. At that time, kerosene was used to fuel stoves and lamps. Gasoline was simply a volatile byproduct of refined kerosene. And the Evolution of the Gas Pump was officially underway.

So I looked up underground gas tanks. Which is pretty much what every gas station out there is now. Not gonna lie I thought they would be more mind blowing than they are. But that’s probably my problem.  They just have some huge tanks under the asphalt.  I watched a video on them being made. That was a little more satisfactory 

Work Cited

https://www.saferack.com/the-first-gas-station/

https://familytreemagazine.com/history/history-of-gas-stations/

https://www.convenience.org/Topics/Fuels/The-History-of-Fuels-Retailing

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/short-picture-history-gas-stations-180967337/

https://www.motorcities.org/story-of-the-week/2015/from-past-to-present-american-service-stations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JG0xcFGi24&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCnPexDVwI