Foraging for Gas

You might not know this if you live in a reasonable part of the country.. but the entire Charlotte metro area has been hurting for gas for about a week now.  Since I work from home and now live near uptown I don’t do a lot of driving anyway but I was getting below 1/4 tank with no sign of things getting back to normal.  Some estimates put availability at 20% of normal but during the day you can expect to wait in long 30 car lines to get it.  Stations sell out within a few hours of receiving a tanker and deliveries seem to be randomly spread around the city.  So you can’t count on a station you saw earlier (with a huge line) to have a supply when you see it later.  Of course the more you drive around looking.. the more it limits your options later if you don’t find any.  It’s a very weird situation.

I had to get out and run some errands yesterday and tried, in vein, to find an open station.  So today I got up and out at 5:30am  to search for gas.  Luckily I’d found the site CharlotteGasPrices and saw reports of an open station just a few miles away and the reports turned out to be correct.  No lines at 5:30.. at least not yet.  I suspect that supply problems and panic buying will continue to impact the area for at least another week and possibly longer.  Combine this with the impending financial melt down and I’m sure it won’t be long until we are living in a Mad Max world roaming the landscape with our trusty mutt searching for ‘go juice’ in up-armored SUVs and fending off motorcycle gangs.  Or perhaps not.