davephan |
05-12-2021 06:04 AM |
I never let my gas tank get much below half a tank. I’ve done that for almost 50 years. Decades ago, back in the high school days, I filled up the top half of my gas tank. Many fellow students that drove filled up the bottom half of their gas tank, from totally empty, to half full.
The only time I ever ran out of gas was with my first car, which was a piece of junk, a 67 Ford station wagon. It ran out of gas during the test drive, right next to the used car dealer, right in front of a gas station!
I remember decades ago, when the price of gasoline was 26 to 28 cents per gallon. Sometimes there were long lines. I’d fill up at the gas station across the street for 30 cents a gallon. Paying a quarter more to fill up wasn’t a big deal decades ago, to avoid the long gas lines.
For decades, I fill up when my tank gets down to half full. Very frequently these days, I fill up when I get down below 3/4 full, or about 100 to 150 miles on the gas tank. I always zero the trip odometer when filling up, so I know how many miles have been driven since the last fill up.
Last year, during the rioting in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, I was at the gas station to fill up my half full lawn mower gas can. My car’s gas tank was already nearly full at the time. Another person and I at the gas station discovered that the gas station was closed in the afternoon. There was a sign on the gas station door, that it was closed due to “Social Disorder”, in other words, it was closed due to the threat of rioting. The other person at the gas station had a nearly empty gas tank, and he didn’t know if he had enough gas left to drive to another gas station!
In my view, running your gas tank is irresponsible! You need to keep enough gas in your tank for unexpected emergency situations. It’s not that much of a hassle to wait in line at Costco or Sam’s Club for gasoline, especially if you’re retired, when you have plenty of free time in your life. You can always check emails and surf the web on your cellphone while you’re in line.
Decades ago, many private pilots ended up running out of gasoline and landed on some of the Twin Cities freeways! This happened multiple times, because the pilots did not maintain enough reserve gas supply in their gas tank. The FAA changed the rules, so if a pilot runs out of fuel, and ends up having to land on a road instead of an airport, they lose their pilot’s license forever. After that rule change, small aircraft no longer landed on the roads because they ran out of gasoline! Maybe you should lose your automobile driver’s license for a year if you run out of gas. Then people would be more responsible.
In today’s world, it’s really irresponsible to let your gas tank get too low. There could be a pipeline computer attack, because the pipeline company management is irresponsible, and refuses to spend money on IT security. Or, there could be an unexpected war in the Middle East, or some other unexpected cause for there to be panic, and a “run” on gas stations.
It’s much better if you are property prepared for the unexpected, by always maintaining enough reserve supply of gasoline in your tank.
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