Rusty Saber: An ode to cheap gasoline: Good days are gone

American Airlines has announced that it will charge travelers $15 for the first bag checked, and fees will increase with each additional bag.

Airline responses to higher fuel costs are limited; they can set ticket prices only so high before folks stop flying. If charging for luggage will help, go ahead and try it.

The airline industry, like most everything else in post-World War II America, benefited for years from inexpensive gasoline. With the advent of jet aircraft, air travel was relatively comfortable and fast – and because aviation fuel was cheap, it was affordable.

Stretching supplies

A seemingly endless supply of cheap gas was a prime ingredient in the creation of the modern American lifestyle.

At the end of World War II, towns began to move far beyond their old boundaries. Because gas was so cheap, Americans could afford longer commutes. As people moved further from downtown business, new shopping centers and other businesses joined the outward advance.

Of course, roads followed to accommodate the people and businesses. The new interstate highways that emerged in the 1950s enabled Americans to make use of cheap gas and see the countryside.

The growing trucking industry, using the same highway system, joined the cheap gas caravan to deliver the enormous stock of goods demanded by the new stores, restaurants and the like. The advancement of the new suburbia never seemed to slow down.

Fast forward to today:

Truckers are hurting badly because the price of diesel fuel has soared beyond $4.50 a gallon. It can easily cost $1,000 to fill a big-rig tank. Trucking companies’ only choice: increase rates and raise the cost of the goods they deliver.

The scope of the migration away from center cities to the suburbs can be seen by comparing a Springfield city map circa 1945, the end of World War II, with a current map.

Note Springfield’s boundaries then and now. The outward growth is amazing. Similar patterns of movement can be found in virtually all American cities. Cheap gasoline wasn’t the only factor, but it made it all affordable.

To travel U.S. Highway 65 and the James River Freeway at morning or evening rush hours is to experience the massive flow of traffic in and out of the city. In larger cities, rush-hour driving conditions make Springfield’s ebb and flow seem to be a trickle in comparison.

However complex the highway system may be to move traffic out of and into cities, drivers are discovering that lifestyles built on cheap gas are now threatened by the tyranny of expensive gas.

End of an era

Why gasoline sold in America for so long for so little is a mystery. According to the 2008 World Almanac, in 1974, the average yearly price of regular gas was 53 cents per gallon. By 1980, the yearly average for regular was $1.24. It would be 2005 before the average reached $2.25.

From this point, the rise has been fast and furious. To demonstrate just how cheap gas was in the United States, regular fuel in 1990 – at $1.14 a gallon – was cheaper than in 1980.

The 1990 average in France was $3.63 per gallon. When the U.S. average reached $2.59 a gallon in 2007, the French average was $5.88.

All I know about petroleum prices is that they are set in a world market by a highly complex fulcrum of supply and demand. America uses more gasoline than it produces.

Again, from the 2008 World Almanac: U.S. oil imports 1990–2007 increased 67 percent.

We are demanding more gasoline imports, along with surging demands from numerous developing nations that once imported little petroleum.

Cheap gas will never return. Since most of us depend on cars for transportation, we have no choice but to adapt.

Conventional wisdom says to find a new source of fuel. That may actually happen someday.

For now, Americans own millions of gasoline-powered automobiles and more are being built and sold every day.

All of us need to give lots of thought about the driving we will and won’t do.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]