Posted on 13 May 2008 by brian
at the pumps: disbelief or a lack of forethought?
I know this shouldn’t make me laugh, but it’s more a reaction to the absurdity of the state of things.
Small service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon in the United States: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can’t register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.
Some of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 as a total, keeping land behemoth or soccer team mover owners from filling up. An alternate solution for some states is to allow stations to display the price for a ½-gallon and then double the final price shown.
Makes me glad I can walk most places I need to reach, but if buses and trains start suffering from the same rising fuel/power/maintenance issues, I might need to whip out the bike… or share one! 
May 13th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I remember the time when gas went above ONE dollar a gallon, back in the day before LCD readouts on pumps. The same thing happened. You think they would have learned from that.