I Knew What The Price Of Gas Would Be 5 Years Ahead Of Everyone Else
July 14th, 2009. Published under Financing. No Comments.
Back in the 1970’s I was selling correspondence courses for Universal Schools out of Miami, Florida. They featured a Heavy Construction School, A Hotel-Motel School, an Insurance Adjuster School and an Airline School.
I covered the State of Iowa for them and on one occasion I had set up an interview with a young lady from Clear Lake, Iowa.
I requested her parents to be at the interview so a decision could be made that at the interview. We all met, I presented the program and the girl was enrolled in the Airline School.
After the paperwork was finished I got to talking with the girl’s father. He said I had great timing because he had only returned from New York a couple of hours before our meeting. It turned out he was an executive with one of the major oil companies. I only remember it was one of the big name companies.
Anyway, he told me he had been at a big meeting and it had been decided that in five years the price of gas was to be $1.00 a gallon. I scoffed and laughed out loud, reminding him that the price of gas was all of 32 cents a gallon. And, as I pointed out, that did not include those times where there was a Gas War.
That’s right. Gas stations – major oil companies and independent stations alike – would roll out a big sign proclaiming ‘GAS WAR!’ and the price of gas was knocked down to 29 cents a gallon. So $1.00 a gallon seemed as far away as the Man In The Moon and I told him so.
I vividly remember his reply: ‘You don’t understand’, he said, ‘It has already been decided. In five years from now the price of gas will be $1.00 a gallon’.
Sure enough, five years later we suddenly had an ‘oil embargo’ and the price of gas at every gas station in America was … you guessed it …
$1.00 a gallon.