What killed the country store?

I think the EPA did. A family story about the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences' and another health initiative that backfired.

My Dad’s business sold gas to about 10 little country stores … until he was told he had to replace all the underground storage tanks at these stores. His business still spent hundreds of thousands of dollars complying with EPA regs.

My last article was on the “Law of Opposite Effects,” which is a cousin of the “Law of Unintended Consequences.”  This article caused me to think about another example of this maxim, one I’ve never seen anyone else write about.  

My late father was a gasoline distributor. What ultimately drove my father out of business was mandates imposed by the EPA dealing with underground gasoline storage tanks. 

The specific worry was gasoline in the drinking water could ultimately increase cases of cancer years or decades in the future.  I don’t know. Maybe this is true, maybe not. 

Today’s article lists a few “unintended consequences” of this EPA regulation that I know happened:

1. The regulations largely killed the country store in America.

2. This, per my logic, undoubtedly killed many people in the decades since, people who lived in rural areas who were forced to drive long distances to get gasoline or staples that used to be sold in these stores.

3) The regulations drove numerous smaller gasoline distributors out of business.

4) My father died of a heart attack at age 70 in 2010. I don’t know this for sure, but the stress and expense of complying with these regulations very possibly contributed to his health issues and perhaps took a couple years off his life.

The Death of the Country Store …

If you’re over 50 and ever drove outside the city limits, you remember every little hamlet in America had at least one country store. 

My father’s business sold (good Gulf) gas to at least 10 such stores. None of them sold large volumes of gasoline every month, but they sold X thousands of gallons per month. Significantly, this kept people who lived in the country from having to drive 35 or 40-miles round-trip to, say, Troy, Alabama to get gas.

The stores also sold milk, bread, sodas, beer, cigarettes, Vienna sausages, etc., popular items which also kept people from driving to the bigger city to get needed staples.

If you drive the county roads today, you’ll still see many of these long-abandoned buildings. They look like Zombie hide-aways and are typically over-grown with kudzu.

While I know many reasons apply, my personal opinion is EPA underground tank regulations largely explain why the vast majority of these stores ultimately closed.

According to the regulations, the people who owned the underground storage tanks had to replace them by a certain date. The tanks also had to be registered with the government and companies like my father’s had to pay environmental engineering firms to test them for leaks.

From a legal sense, gasoline distributors owned most of the underground tanks. I can’t remember how much it cost in 1990 to replace three or four underground tanks (unleaded, mid-level unleaded, super unleaded and diesel). But for the little country stores it would have taken probably 20 years of fuel sales to recoup the expense. 

My father would have had to replace not just the tanks at one rural account, but also nine other little accounts.

On top of that, he also had to replace and/or do non-stop testing of all the storage tanks he owned at the gas stations in the city that sold a lot more gas. Those were the priority accounts.

I asked Dad once how much he (or his company) had spent complying with the underground tank regs. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.

Nothing was stopping the country store owner from buying and installing new, safer underground tanks, but they couldn’t afford this either. Given the small margins on a gallon of gas and the fact many of these accounts might have only sold 300 gallons a day, the math simply didn’t add up. 

The bulk of the stores’ inside sales came from people who had stopped to buy gas. So when gasoline sales were no longer possible, the stores sold fewer Cokes and Vienna sausages.

So, over about a decade, (my estimate) 90 percent of America’s “country stores” started closing.

People who lived in the country now had to drive

to the city to get gas or snacks or milk

Here we need to think about the most dangerous thing we all do every day. This thing is called “driving a car.”

Actuarial data tells us the more miles you drive, the more likely it is you’ll be involved in an accident resulting in either a fatality(ies) or serious life-altering injuries.

It’s now been about 20 to 25 years since most of those county stores that existed in the 1970s and 1980s have been closed. People who lived in rural hamlets had no other choice but to drive 30 or 40 extra miles to get gas or a can of Copenhagen or whatever items they could once buy at the country store four miles from their home.

No one knows how many traffic accidents have occurred because of this extra driving (this is called an “unknown unknowable”) … but by now, it must be a very large number.

I’ll acknowledge it’s possible underground tank regulations prevented some cancer cases, perhaps many, which would be a good result. However, it’s also possible these regulations haven’t prevented any cancer deaths or only a small number.

Here it is in 2023 - these regs have kicked in long ago - and all I hear about every week is some other friend or acquaintance who has been diagnosed with cancer. As far as I can tell, cancer is more prevalent than ever.

We see the same alleged rationale with Covid vaccines and Covid masks, which we are told by “experts” prevented millions of deaths. Whatever last year’s official Covid death number was we can be assured it would have been double this figure absent these life-saving safety mandates.

The same “settled science” no doubt applies to the cancer-preventing underground tank regulations. Although more people than ever seem to be battling cancer, the figure would have been far worse if … we didn’t shut down all those dangerous country stores three decades ago.

As far as the increase in traffic accidents, or the fact people who live in the country now have to pay to drive 2,000 extra miles every year to go to the gas station or grocery stores in the nearest city … why would someone bring this up now? Nobody did back then. 

I’m bringing it up today because it would be nice if more people thought about the (tragic) unintended consequences that often result from some massively-expensive government “health and safety” initiative. It’s the law of Opposite Effects. If our government says they are doing something to save lives; they are getting ready to kill some people.

Today, the great environmental fear is carbon emissions, which are supposedly causing the climate to change, which the experts tell us can lead to death from a million causes.

If nothing else, the death of the country store added thousands of extra driving miles for everyone who lives 20 miles from the nearest city. 

As tens of millions of Americans live “in the country,” that’s billions of extra car trips over 20 years. In other words, there’s no telling how many extra hurricanes were caused last year because we shut down so many country stores 25 years ago.

“Those jobs are going, boy, and they ain’t coming back

… to my hometown”

I don’t know if a metric as prosaic as “local jobs” matters, but I’m certain these tank regulations killed hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.

I know this: My father started thinking about selling his business as soon as compliance with underground tank regulations became THE issue in his business.

Dad once told me why he sold. 

“You either have to get a lot bigger or you have to get out,” he said. 

That quote’s stayed with me because I think it applies to all kinds of businesses.

Dad basically decided he’d had enough and sold his business to another out-of-town gasoline jobber who was willing to get bigger.

Every gasoline distributor in our county ended up doing the exact same thing. When Dad bought his business in 1977, there were six gasoline distributors based in my hometown of Troy, Alabama. By 2010, there were zero.

To be sure, people in Pike County, Alabama can still buy gasoline - but far fewer of those gasoline stations are owned by local business people.

Chapman Oil Company never employed more than 10 people, but it was the type business that makes a little town a better place to live. 

Dad always sponsored a Little League team. He bought ads in all the football programs and yearbooks of the local high schools. He supported all the good civic causes good “corporate citizens” support. 

All the other gas distributors did the same thing and also employed seven or so people and purchased gas trucks that the local mechanics and tire dealers serviced.

The EPA and Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) didn’t seem too interested in those employees or all the auxiliary businesses that those businesses supported - not to mention all the employees at the dozens of country stores in our county that no longer exist.

These regulations might have killed my father

My father died of a heart attack at age 70. I can’t say for certain that worries over dealing with these environmental regulations contributed to his heart attack, but I know stress is said to be the leading killer in society and my father worried about those regulations for decades. 

It’s funny the little anecdotes you remember. One I remember about my Dad is that, after work, he never wanted to drive anywhere that would take him past his business (which we called the bulk plant).

I get it today. When Dad rode by the bulk plant, he didn’t think about the good jobs (with good health benefits) he was providing; he thought about the fact he might get sued or fined or thrown in jail if he didn’t test or replace all of his underground tanks. He thought about losing the business and not being able to provide for his family. 

My father was once a great football player. He might have been the toughest guy in our town. But he wasn’t that tough. He was scared to death of the EPA and ADEM. And the lawyers and the bankers. His fear was whether he could keep his business and keep providing for his family.

Actually, Dad was pretty tough in business too. He kept - and grew - a good business for 15 years.

Owning and operating a business isn’t for sissies. But it’s even tougher - far tougher than it should be - when staying on the good side of myriad government bureaucrats is your gravest worry.

For the record, Dad never whined or questioned why he had to spend all that money. The government said he had to do it and so he did it.

His middle son, however, grew up to be skeptical of all the official narratives … including the narrative that pretty much every underground storage tank in America had to be replaced by a certain date … or else … bad things would happen.

Well, bad things did happen.

Most of the country stores in America closed. Most of the smaller gasoline distributors sold out to the out-of-town Big Guys. And my father couldn’t have been the only gasoline distributor who fought depression and came close to a nervous breakdown because of these regulations.

I miss the country stores and wish they still existed … but they never had a chance. 

And it still bothers me that unknown bureaucrats - who acted like they were saving the world -  - caused decades of my father’s life to be filled with stress and worry.

Even today, I wonder if these bureaucrats and politicians know what they did to so many good people. Or if they care.