Service stations are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Why is this?
According to a Forbes article written by Elie Y. Katz from January 2022, "Consumers and business owners are facing challenging times at gas stations across the nation. Due to the pandemic, people are making fewer trips to the gas station.
"The number of people working at home has skyrocketed, and with no commute, they don’t need service stations as often as they did in the past. With the remote working trend likely to continue in the immediate and possibly long-term future, the need for gas will likely not increase. There has also been a decrease in family vacations, which means fewer vehicles fueling up for long road trips.
"Finally, the federal government’s encouragement of the adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles, by default, disadvantages gas stations. All of this adds up to very small profit margins, an average of 1.4%, or $0.05-$0.07 a gallon."
And yet there was a time when there were gas stations at every major intersection in a city. (Meister Road and Oberlin Avenue in Lorain is a good example, with a gas station on three out of four corners.)
But stations weren't always built on empty, available farmland. In smaller cities, they had to muscle their way in among homes that had been there for decades. So there was a cost: a lot of fine, old houses had to go.
The photo below from the April 19, 1965 Journal shows this process in action in Amherst.
The caption notes, "This shovel went into operation this week in Amherst at Cleveland and Lincoln streets on the northeast corner as workmen started to wreck the first of two houses shown in this picture. The first house was demolished Wednesday, and yesterday the razing of the house shown in the background commenced.
"The two residences are being removed to clear a site for a new Atlantic service station, the second new station to be built on the north side of Cleveland Ave., close to the downtown section."
I'm not sure how long the station was in operation, but today an insurance company occupies the location.
Amherst has a similar situation a little to the east on the corner of Cleveland and Spring Street. Who could have guessed back in the 1960s that these stations located in old-time neighborhoods would eventually close?
I remember what my college buddy Hoob (who worked for BP America) told me back in the 1980s: "We make more money selling chips and beer at these stations than we do selling gasoline."
