[Badbart56]

My first (paying) job that I had was pumping gas at a Gulf station in 1972. I was just a farm kid in the Florida panhandle and gas back then was .25 for regular and .28 for high test. There was a diesel pump on the side of the building for log trucks and farmers and I believe it was selling for .17 a gallon. Of course back then nobody had diesel pickup trucks and although I had heard of them, no one I knew had a diesel Mercedes.

The next year the Arab Oil Embargo hit and the prices for gas went to I believe $1.25 a gallon seemingly overnight. I don't remember what diesel went to but for as long as I can remember it was always cheaper than gas. That is until the diesel pickups got popular, then it went crazy and passed the gas prices.

At some point in the 90's I had a conversation with a petroleum engineer and asked him how this had come to be. He just smiled and said that they "crack" the barrel differently from how they used to. I took that to mean they had made diesel more scarce so they could jack the price up on it.