These days, telephoning some local company to deliver fuel to heat your home sounds downright quaint. Even more bizarre would be to hear a homeowner say, “Hey honey, I’m headed to the Vendo-Matic to pick up some coal. Do we need any Presto logs?”
Seventy years ago, companies like Pacific Mutual Fuels, Bell Fuel, and Griffin Fuel competed mightily for customers throughout the Tacoma area. While delivering coal, firewood, and fuel oil were the companies mainstay, vending machines like this one operated by Pacific Mutual Fuels popped up in several locations. This Jan. 26, 1952 photo demonstrates how customers could purchase 50-pound bags of Egg-Nut coal for 65¢ or seven Presto-logs for 60¢, 24 hours a day. In addition to their few self-service coal and Presto-logs stations, Pacific Mutual delivered conventional heating fuels such as stove oil (diesel), stoker coal, range coal, furnace coal, wood planer ends, and log ends.
At the time of the 1950 Census, over two-thirds of U.S. families heated their homes with coal (35%), fuel oil (23%), or wood (10%). Natural gas supplied another 27% while electricity surprisingly heated less than 1% of homes in the United States. With its abundance of dams, Washington residents enjoyed a far higher share of heating homes with electricity, but very little natural gas as conveyance pipelines didn’t reach the state until the mid 1950s.
Pacific Mutual Fuels was owned by B.R. “Boots” Christiansen and Frank Schnider with their head office located at 401 East 11th Street in Tacoma. The company gained distinction for their brand by sponsoring women’s baseball teams, both fastpitch and softball. Nicknamed the Fuelerrettes, the Pacific Mutual teams captured several league and state titles during the late 1940s and early 1950s. This photo number C64959-1 by Richards Studio comes courtesy of the Northwest Room in the Tacoma Public Library.
