Some more trivia about gas rationing...

During WWII my father had a Conogo gas station in Salt Lake City, UT.  I can remember sitting at the desk in the office pasting gas stamp onto pages which my father had to turn in when he received fuel deliveries.

My father was a very resourceful fellow. I can recall that the station was a very busy place, I can also recall there being 50 gal barrels of gas stored at the rear of the station, which I found to be very odd at the time. Many years after the war ended I asked my father about the barrels of gas, this was his response.

Salt Lake City during WWII was a very busy place, with it's excellent rail connections it became a hub for storage depots and military training facilities. Utah being Utah is has some strange laws about alcohol consumption. A state issued license was required to purchase anything other than 3.2% beer. In order to get a license you had to be a resident, which meant that service personell could not buy alcohol, whiskey, wine ect., however, they had fuel cards because of the distances some of the military  installations were from SLC.

Being the resourceful fellow my father was, he got a lot of his Mormon customers to get alcohol licenses, and thereby purchase whiskey, ect., which he traded to the Army/Navy men for their gas stamps, then he traded the gas stamps to his Mormon customers for whiskey, naturally with money to boot, they in turn gave him the stamps for gas.

Of course none of this was quite legal. ::)....Billl

On on ebay there was a action for a gas ration sticker holder... Did not know if ths was home-made or a option ... It loked old and metal and It went on like a license plate topper ... Just wondering if anybody knows for -sure.. thanks  Happy PLY-mouthing... DANiel

Here's a pretty good page about the stickers:

http://www.prewarbuick.com/features/your_car_is_a_war_now


The 'A' sticker was issued to owners whose use of their cars was nonessential.  Hand the pump jockey your Mileage Ration Book coupons and cash, and she (yes, female service station attendants) could sell you three or four gallons a week, no more.  For nearly a year, A-stickered cars were not to be driven for pleasure at all.
The green 'B' sticker was for driving deemed essential to the war effort; industrial war workers, for example, could purchase eight gallons a week.  Red 'C' stickers indicated physicians, ministers, mail carriers and railroad workers, and incidentally were the most counterfeited type.  'T' was for truckers, and the rare 'X' sticker went to Members of Congress and other VIPs.

Just as a bit of silly trivia........some years ago, I was able to find an original 'C' sticker at a swap meet, and had some copies run, which I gave to a few old car-owning friends.

For those who haven't seen a 'C' sticker, that one was only issued to various classifications of 'essential war workers', including doctors, nurses, ministers, police officers, etc., and allowed unlimited purchase of gasoline. One of the classifications for which a little box could be 'checked' was 'essential scrap agent'.

The stickers, when issued, had a classification checked, and then had a local board stamp to 'verify' them.

An acquaintance, who did computer graphics work, asked for one of the re-printed stickers, and re-printed a few more, after neatly adding another line to the classifications, which reflected the 'real world' situation of that time. The additional class of personnel qualifying for a C sticker was listed as 'Friend/Relative of local board member'.

cheers

Carla

As I recall, the sticker is usually placed in the lower right corner of the wind shield..... Normally nothing is placed on the wind shield of older cars that might block the drivers field of vision....Bill

Just wondering about the correct placement of the "A" gas rationing sticker on the windsheld?

Thanks,
Bob