Filled my car with petrol

@DeWayfarer No, fill up then pay.
Some servos ask for prepayment between the hours of 10pm - 6am.

@Gusman it's been decades since they allowed that here. Like 30 years .😞

@DeWayfarer Why? Too many filling up and driving off without paying?

@Gusman Exactly! About thirty years. In every state.

@Gusman it's even gotten worse in some places. Some cards are not accepted at the pump. You have to see the cashier first.

@Gusman just sticking to gas situation shows that.

Some here have driven their trucks over the area where tankers fill up the pump and they have their own pumps in the trucks to fill up their own tanks.

@DeWayfarer Most fuel outlets don't make you pre-pay here. Most of Australia is considered 'safe' where you are 'trusted'.

@zonavar68 I just learned that from Gus. Not the case here in the USA though.

I have been in 40 States to know.

@Gusman Although self-service has been almost universal in UK filling-staions for years, pre-payment pumps, fitted with card-readers, seem fairly new here. It does srtop drive-away theft by being impossible to defraud, but it also allow 24-hour service without needing pay someone to sit in the shop all night for hardly any customers.

The service-areas on the motorways stay open but most of those have reasonable numbers of customers throughout the night - and they all charge significantly more for the fuel than do the garages on the ordinary roads. **

Back in the 1960s-70s, some filling-stations installed pumps with bank-note takers, usually set to accept a single £5 note. That might have given 4 to 5 gallons. Those ended as the cost of fuel rose. £5 will not buy much petrol now, at around £1.40 / litre (£6.35 / UK Gallon, but fuels are sold in litres). Diesel fuel is more expensive still though a Diesel car is significantly more fuel-efficient than its petrol equivalent: e.g. around 60mpg v. 45mpg.

......

** A Diversion:

I don't know if anyone has actually analysed fuel costs between A-road routes and motorways where a geographically-sensible choice exists.

Excepting frustrating stop-go progress due to accidents or break-downs ahead; using the motorway involves very little driving below top-gear, manual or automatic. You can generally maintain the car's optimum cruising speed (while obeying the 70mph or any temporary, lower, speed limit!), and there are none of the ordinary roads' normal obstacles - tight bends, steep hills, slow vehicles, multitudinous junctions, towns, etc.

Even passing 20 miles of road-works at 50mph adds merely 6 minutes to the 70mph time, although it feels interminable. This was the case on M6 in Cheshire for months last year, by the "upgrading to managed motorway" work.

So despite the higher mean speed on the M-way your vehicle can be at its most efficient for most of the way.

Therefore, even if you buy all of the fuel at the over-priced motorway services, and despite the higher mean speed, overall a long journey cost might be comparable or even lower on the M-way. And the journey would be quicker.

@ArishMell I was paying at the pump in 2000 with a card in Texas.

Back then Texas wasn't exactly high tech. I could even tell you the debt card Bank.

My father hated being forced to get a debit card in 1986.