(OT) $2.99.9 gallon

Can anyone tell me where the 9/10 cent came from? Gas wars of the 60s? Been there since I started driving. 45 years

Federal tax?

Here ya go.

1. Why do gas prices always end in 9/10 of a cent?

To answer the most wondered-about question in the history of "I've Always Wondered" (seriously, at least 15 people wanted to know), we headed to Three Lakes, Wisconsin, and meet up with Ed Jacobsen (otherwise known as "Jake the Oil Guy").

Jacobsen worked for Esso and then bought a half-dozen gas stations he ran for decades. Now, he runs the Northwoods Petroleum Museum -- a collection of at least 4,000 items, from drill bits to vintage gas pumps to antique oil company freebies (in Jacobsen's words, "I can’t really put a value on that because then I’d have to tell my wife and then we’d really have a problem. 'You spent how much on what?'").

"We have to go way back to when the oil companies were selling gas for, let’s say, 15 cents, and then the state and federal boards decided they wanted a piece of that to keep the roads going, so they added 3/10 of a cent. And the oil companies said, ‘Well, we’re not going to eat that,’ so they passed that on to the public."

Raising prices a penny would have been disastrous when gas only cost 15 cents. But why did it stick around?

"They found out that if you priced your gas 1/10 of a cent below a break point, let’s say 40 cents a gallon, '.399' just looked to the public like 39 cents…"

You won't find tenths of a cent on your credit card bill. Or even on the pump. But if you buy 15 gallons of gas at $3.299, you’re paying 13 cents more than at just $3.29. Since Americans buy 178 million gallons of gas a day, that’s a half-billion dollars more per year.

Jacobsen says the price of gas is the hottest topic in his museum. But there's a big misconception out there.

"People come in here and they say, 'Oh, $0.185, oh, that’s tremendous. I wish it were that way today.' Well, it is. In fact it might be a little cheaper. If you take just inflation alone, gas at 30 cents then would be about $2.20 a gallon now, but you used to get 10 miles to the gallon. Now, we're averaging over 20 miles to the gallon."

Adjusted that way, gas cost $4.50 a gallon back in the day.

Long before the 1960s.

Dean

No mystery. It's been that way for over 60 years. "29.9 cents per gallon" sounded cheaper than "30 cents per gallon".

The 99 cent store used to be just that - until they figured out how to make the cash register come up with 99.9 cents. That makes a difference at the end of the day.

Gas was $2.61.9 at Costco a couple days ago.

Federal and state highway funding taxes are 40c here.