Gasoline Alley Rebellion

Superficially, these would seem to be the best of times for gas-station operators. Price wars are relics of the past. Windshield wiping, oil checking and other time-consuming courtesies have become superfluous. The dealers work shorter hours and, when their stations are open, drivers line up for blocks to buy all the gas they can.

Yet gasoline dealers are becoming one of the nation's most restive minorities. Operators in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia threatened to close their stations last week to protest federal fuel allocations and a regulation that prohibits them from saving gas for their regular customers. Some really did shut down. Others complain about rising costs, dwindling revenue from accessories and repairs, and harassment by Internal Revenue Service inspectors enforcing the no-favoritism ruling. The traditionally high rate of dealer turnover has been climbing even higher. A surprising number of dealers--450 in Massachusetts alone in the past three months--have gone out of business. Says Charles Binsted, executive director of the National Congress of Petroleum Retailers: "The dealers are absolutely wild right now. We can hardly control them any more."

Dangerous Antics. Beyond that, customers are subjecting dealers to distressing and even dangerous antics. One perhaps apocryphal story is that last week the driver of a Cadillac pulled into a station near Baltimore and ordered:

"Fill 'er up." His car swallowed 88 gallons. There were tanks in the trunk, under the seat, everywhere, and they were all interconnected. In Gary, Ind., a Shell dealer objected when a customer tried to cut in front of a 25-car line to get air for his tires--and the customer shot him dead.

To help ease the dealers' plight, the Federal Energy Office will allow about half of the nation's 220,000 stations to raise gasoline prices an extra penny per gallon next week. But FEO and oil-company executives are not entirely sympathetic to the dealers. The oil men say that the average station's markup on a gallon has risen 32% since 1972, to 8.25-c---so, even if a dealer receives only 85% of his 1972 supplies this year--a typical figure--he can still make more profit. Oil executives say that their dealers also are saving money on heat, electricity and pump jockeys' wages now that hours are shorter.

Dealers retort that selling gas is all they get to do now, and other, once-profitable parts of their business are suffering. "Sales of oil and parts are off 50%," says Bob Graves, whose Lexington, Mass., Texaco station is teetering on the brink of insolvency. "Repairs are lower because we just don't have time to get under a customer's hood. People are driving less and having fewer accidents, so they don't need to get towed. And with the phone ringing constantly, my mechanic can't get any work done. Just about the only place where demand is up is for the rest rooms, after people wait in line for an hour or so." Still, Texaco notified him last week that his rent would be raised. "I swear the oil companies are trying to put dealers out of business," he says, "but the only way I'm going out of here is in handcuffs."

Federal energy officials late last week announced that 240 million gallons of gasoline will be taken out of refiners' inventories and sent to stations in 25 states. But, says Jerry Cohen, a lawyer for the National Congress of Petroleum Retailers: "The only thing this government seems to react to is pressure." Some station owners have begun to talk about emulating the independent truckers, whose fuel-related strike last month ended with the granting of almost all their demands.

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