For Man & Machine

The day is not far off when the casual motorist in New England will have a new joy. He will drive up to a handsome colonial edifice set in a little park plot with poplar trees about it and there he will satisfy both his machine and himself. For the machine there will be gasoline and oil; for the man there will be hot dogs.

This new type of filling station--in the fullest sense--is about to be erected by Beacon Oil Co., subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Beacon announced last week that it had made contracts for six trial stands with Hygrade Food Products Corp. which will furnish the required food and drink. The roadside refreshment stands of the country number 110,000. They did a business of $250,000,000 in 1928. In an era of mergers what is more logical than to do this business efficiently in connection with the filling station?

Not new is the idea that other articles than gasoline and oil should be vended from the ubiquitous filling station. An ordinary roadside station may do a gross business of $25,000 a year in gasoline and oil. A city station of the same size may sell three times as much. But whether 200 or 1,000 gallons of gasoline per day gush through a hose into 30 gas tanks, many motorists must wait beside the filling station. While they wait they might as well be sold something.

In the West, where distances are great there are already deluxe filling stations, each of which represents no small fortune in invested capital, where any motorist can have his car fueled, washed, greased and mechanical adjustments made, all while he is buying tires or any kind of auto accessory that takes his fancy.*

Today the ordinary country filling station may sell $300 or $400 of tires in a year, but at least one tire company--Firestone--foresees that in the future many if not most tires will be sold by chain tire stores, each part of a master service station in whose several departments specialized brake service, washing and greasing, battery service, will be combined with a filling station and a store for selling electrical equipment.

Such service stations may cost $400,000 or $500,000 apiece. The company which is to establish them must have for sale a wide range of equipment and services. Already Firestone has begun the manufacture of batteries. It is said that Harvey S. Firestone not long since called Harvey Jr. to him and commanded: "Go forth, my son, and buy me an oil company."

* A California-designed hot-dog-stand called Bonzo is completely cynomorphic. in the stucco likeness of a seated puppy, with the front door between his forepaws, windows in his ribs.