The Fuel Crisis Begins to Hurt

The energy pinch so far has been an abstract thing for most Americans, more future threat than present trouble. Last week, for a growing number, the crisis brought real pain. Shortage-caused layoffs spread into the auto, electronics, rubber and aluminum industries. Traveling was rapidly becoming a nightmare because of gasless Sundays, airline flight cancellations and, most spectacularly, a series of highway blockades in the East, Midwest and South staged by owner-drivers of heavy trailer trucks.

The truckers, squeezed between rising diesel-fuel costs and lower speed limits that cut the number of miles they can cover in a day, are the first large group of Americans to have their incomes directly reduced by the fuel crisis (see box page 33). Their protests seemed spontaneous; both the Teamsters Union and the American Trucking Association publicly disavowed them. But the drivers have their own informal communications network: the Citizen's Band radios that link them rig-to-rig as they roll along. Last week those radios crackled with calls to revolt by parking tractor-trailers across turnpikes and barricading traffic. After the first major jam was organized Monday by a driver (known to other truckers as River Rat) on a stretch of Interstate 80 near Blakeslee, Pa., the stoppages spread into Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, New York and Ohio. One of the worst blockades, staged by 350 trucks, backed up traffic as much as twelve miles on roads leading to the Delaware Memorial Bridge in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area.

The longest tie-up, on the Ohio Turnpike, strangled traffic between Cleveland and Toledo for nearly 24 hours beginning Wednesday morning.

By midweek, the Governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania had ordered state police and National Guard units to drag stopped trucks off the road and arrest any drivers who tried to interfere. That tactic broke the traffic jams, but the truckers are determined to continue their protests until the Nixon Administration gets fuel prices reduced, raises speed limits or both. Some are trying to organize a nationwide strike for Thursday and Friday this week.

Non-professional drivers are already getting a taste of gas-pump privation. On the first gasless Sunday, an estimated 90% of the nation's filling-station operators obeyed President Nixon's call to shut down between 9 p.m. Saturday and midnight Sunday. Whether the closings actually saved much--or any--fuel is questionable. Some stations did double their normal business on Saturday, then ran dry in the early-Monday rush. "It's just like the run on nylons in World War II," said a Boston attendant. Highways were nearly emptied in some areas; toll takers on Chicago expressways had unaccustomed leisure to lean out of their booths and chat between collections. But around such cities as San Francisco and Miami, roads seemed as crowded as ever.

An unusual number of heedless motorists were stranded when they ran out of gas. Members of the Illinois Gasoline Dealers Association in Chicago banded together to deliver three gallons to each motorist who called, charging the pump price plus a $5 service fee and a $5 donation to the American Cancer Society. Their "hot line" logged more than 500 calls. Tow trucks on Los Angeles freeways dispensed so much fuel that by nightfall they were out and could only push cars off the roadway.

The shutdown even sparked some incidents of violence. Bill Sutton, owner of a South Miami filling station, had to call police after a motorist to whom he refused to sell gas on Saturday night swung a hose at him, shouting: "I am going to get some gas even if I have to kill somebody." In Hanford, Calif., a station owner who had closed at the President's call found that a competitor across the street was open on Sunday and doing a hopping business. So the patriot hauled out a pistol and shot up six of his rival's pumps.

Traveling by means other than a car was no joyride, either. Airlines, struggling to stay within new fuel allocation, have canceled 1,000 of their 13,000 daily scheduled flights within the U.S. and will chop many more after the first of the year. Travelers are turning back to the railroads in such numbers that trains are jammed.

Big Shift. Many Americans will not have the money to travel. The scheduled layoffs in the auto industry reached 175,000 workers, who will be idle for a week or so around Christmas as plants close to shift production from standard-sized autos to fuel-saving small cars. The Big Three announced last week that November sales totaled 772,795 units, down a startling 118,000 from a year earlier. Layoffs are also spreading into supplier industries: Davidson Rubber Co., the largest employer in Dover, N.H., will furlough 200 of its 1,400 employees for at least two months because of waning orders from the automakers who buy its arm rests and other components. In Pennsylvania, 3,000 employees of Leeds & Northrup, an electronics firm, will be idled for a week as their plant shuts down to save fuel.

Another threat to the wallet is the galloping increase in inflation caused by the fuel crisis. The wholesale price in dex in November shot up at an annual rate of 21.6%, led by a 19.3% jump in fuel prices. The Cost of Living Council nevertheless decided last week to per mit an extra boost of 20 a gallon in wholesale prices of heating oil that will shortly raise homeowners' monthly bills.

The COLC simultaneously ordered a penny-a-gallon cut in wholesale gasoline prices, but consumers will never see that one; it will be overwhelmed by other in creases permitted due to rising prices for crude oil. The purpose of the two moves is to prod refineries to shift more of their output to home heating oil by making it more profitable to produce, compared with gasoline.

Other changes in Americans' daily lives -- present and future -- will result from Government action on federal, state and city levels. In Washington, the Senate followed the House in voting year-round Daylight Saving Time, effective in late December or early January, and it approved a ten-year, $20 billion program for energy research and development, exclusive of funds to be spent on nuclear research. More states lowered speed limits; freeway-laced California went down to 55 m.p.h., and so did Florida. In Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power announced a contingency plan to limit businesses to 50 hours of operation per week.

Still, the shortages worsen. The New York State Public Service Commission last week proposed a statewide 5% cut in electrical power output, which would douse nearly all outdoor advertising and cause store-window lights to blink off after 9:30 p.m. and office-building and parking-lot lights to go dark three hours after the close of business every night. Texaco announced that its deliveries of home heating oil, diesel and tractor fuel to distributors this month will be 27% lower than in December last year. At that, the American shortages are mild compared with those in Europe, where bitter cold and record snowfalls are already worsening the bite. An economic study now being passed around among top officials of the Common Market calls a 1974 recession certain. Output in the nine countries will drop 2% to 3% next year, the study predicts, and unemployment will double, if not triple. If so, the Community will face the worst crisis in its 15-year history; never have its members had to coordinate policy during a recession.

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