Gas pumps to gas station owners: FACE

People have spoken at length about how rising gas prices will affect this asshole who isn’t me and that asshole who isn’t me. But what about the poor small town gas station-owning assholes who aren’t me?

Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can’t register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are still just scraping by.

Many of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers to fill their tanks all the way.

At Chip Colville’s Chevron station in this eastern Washington town, where men in the family have pumped gas since 1919, three stubby, gray pumps were installed when gas was less than $1 a gallon. They top out at $3.999, only 30 cents above the price of regular gas at Colville’s station.

“In small towns, where you don’t have the volume, there’s no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps,” Colville said. “It’s just not economically feasible.”

Maybe this is just my big city mindset, but I’m inclined to say that Mom and Pop should both just die. Not my Mom and Pop, your Mom and Pop. I don’t really care about your small town problems, like increased expenditures, tornados, your daughter running off with a salesman who stumbled onto your farm, or black civil rights.

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