“Compared to established dealers, self-serves offered price discounts, high volume (self-serves were the first multi-pump stations), novelty, convenience (generally 24 hours), reduced wait (averaging 2 minutes per car), safety (automatic shut-off nozzles, enforced rules), attractive and spacious layout, and glamor (roving female cashiers).”

In 1930, as described in yesterday’s post, a new form of competition arose wherein the motorist got out of the vehicle to self-served and received a lower price for gasoline or diesel. Protest from established dealers, in alliance with local fire marshals, however, led to municipal ordinances to hamper self-serves.

A promising form of low-cost gasoline marketing, rivaling the discounts of tracksiders (stations selling discounted gasoline obtained directly from tank cars at railroad crossings) was postponed.

California … and the Nation

On May 1, 1947, a large self-service operation opened in California that received wide publicity and reawakened entrepreneurs to this particular form of discounting.…

“For years, the lobby of small gas station owners worried they would be crushed by big oil companies, which then owned most stations, and could afford to install the modern pumps and canopies self-service demanded. ‘They would have been 10 or 15 cents a gallon less than mine, so they would have buried me,’ said Sal Risalvato, who opened a station in Paramus [New Jersey] in the late 1970s.”

– Kate Zernike , “Drop That Gas Nozzle: New Jersey Is Full-Service Island, and Likes It,” New York Times, May 23, 2015, A1.

Saturday’s New York Times front-page article, Drop That Gas Nozzle: New Jersey Is Full-Service Island, and Likes It, brought the peculiar politics of New Jersey’s ban on self-service gasoline/diesel to a national audience. Fines for self-pumping start at $50 and grow to $500 for repeat offenders.…

“It is time to welcome the good news about climate science–the exaggeration of warming and harm by too-hot climate models. It is past time to hurl ad hominem at those intellectuals who reject neo-Malthusians on theoretical and empirical grounds.”

“Ad hominem—is that all you got? I happen to hold my views because I believe in them. Is there something wrong with that?” Such was my response to a professor who complained about an opinion-page editorial I published in the Daily Oklahoman: “Rob Bradley: Is Sourcewatch wrong? We simple folks in Oklahoma just like to know who butters your bread.”

And another comment:

So no bias at there being your boss is Koch, huh? Sure. we TOTALLY believe you are not carrying water for the Koch brothers and that if you had a totally different opinion, you wouldn’t loose that kushy job… I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.

“Voters and citizens all must tell Tom Steyer, the moneyed Left Foundations, taxpayer-inebriated scientists, green-energy cronies, Left politicians, and Crony Republicans that human-need philanthropy should replace the politics of pessimism and waste. It is time to end the futile climate crusade.”

– Robert Bradley, “Doubling Down on Climate Alarmism,” Forbes.com, December 1, 2014.

The free-market energy space these days is very crowded, quite unlike the old days when just a few of us were battling Big Government, Big Environmentalism, and Big Cronyism (think Enron). As one of the veterans, my blogs and op-eds now compete against a number of new voices, beginning with Alex Epstein and continuing with “America’s Voice for Energy” Marita Noon, and others. (Marlo Lewis, then as now, stands above as scholar-blogger.)…