When people traveled across the country by car, they used to be given quite a few choices in the services that they received when they pulled into a gas station. There were full service facilities and self-serve options and there were a variety of ways that people could choose to pay for the items that they received at every stop.

One of the easiest ways that they had for paying for gas was to give the payment directly to the attendant who had filled the tank for them. The full-service facilities afforded them the opportunity to review maps and plan out their travels a bit more or they at least had enough time to figure out where they were exactly and how much farther they had to travel before night fall.

If they chose to give the attendant a credit card, they knew that he would return it promptly without ever leaving their sight. The credit card machine would make three carbon copies and the customer always received the one at the bottom. These were the times where travelers never thought to ask for the carbons after they placed their signature on the dotted line. Travel by car was considered one of the safest methods around.

In the past, people never had to be concerned with the self-serve gas options that they had. There were easy ways to pay for gas and people never gave it a second thought. People would usually drive up to the tank and begin to fill the tank to the top without worrying about the price of the gas that was going into the tank. Back then, it was never necessary to pay in advance for the gas that would be pumped.

People that traveled by car were respected by every gas merchant that they came in contact with. It would have been inconceivable to them to be limited in the amount of gas that they could purchase at any one time, and the concept of people having to wait in long lines in sweltering heat for gas were unheard of. Some people never thoroughly understood why they had to comply with a cash only option for the gas that they had already pumped into their tank.

People used gas stations to perform all types of maintenance on their cars and never thought that they would ever be charged to put air into their tires. As the options on the quality of the gas changed, so did the payment method options. Now people can choose to pay directly at the pump using credit cards, debit cards and cash options. Back then, they certainly never had to worry about being delayed in their travels by the pump mechanism itself. Most travelers are greatly inconvenienced because the pump has been programmed to run slower when it approached the prepaid amount.