I worked at a gas station from 1972 through about 1980. The 73/74 gas crisis was a much bigger issue then the 79 version was.
The station I worked at was one of the highest volume stations in town during those years. During 73/74 our station did indeed run out of gas a few times, but it was usually later in the day, and usually we had a truck dropping 8,000 gallons the next morning. We were suppose to follow that odd/even day thing where you were only suppose to be able to buy gas on the day that matched the last number or you license plate, or something like that. My boss didn't follow that program at all, if we had gas to pump, anyone with money to but it was welcome to come in and get it. It didn't take long for the customers to understand that and most would just stop in earlier in the day if they could. The only lines we usually saw was on holiday weekends, and I don't ever remember us running out of gas during those times. Our station was on US 20, and about the mid point between Chicago Il and Galena Il. A lot of people from Chicago spent their weekends in the Galena area, our weekend traffic was very high. During the 73/74 "gas shortage" the price of gas went from about $.30 a gallon up to $.65 a gallon.

Between 74 and 78, gas bumped up around $.10 a gallon about every couple of weeks. People complained, but still bought gas. It was a great time to buy those gas guzzling high performance cars though. People were spending more money then they would ever save by buying those "fuel efficient new cars".

The biggest problem in the 78/79 gas squeeze was the issue with the gas pumps. Most would only register a gallon price up to $.99.9 a gallon and most the signs that stated the gas prices were also limited to the under a dollar price per gallon. When the price topped that $1 a gallon, we had to change our price sign to show a 1/2 gallon price, and we had to do the same thing with the pump. A lot of people thought they had the right to but a gallon of gas at the posted 1/2 gallon price. Sometimes it was a battle to convince them how it was. With our station even being one of the high volume stations in town, we still had to deal with the 1/2 gallon price for a couple months. We had gas lines then because we had to double the pump price with every gas purchase. Having gas to sell was never a problem. The media was already making up lies to cover the real issue, the pumps and the signs didn't go over the dollar a gallon price. We were told when the new pumps were installed that they would be able to handle the price per gallon up to $10 per gallon. Most stations have changed the pumps since then because the self service thing changed the way gas was sold. That too was an all new learning experience for both the station employees and the customers. In IL that was becoming the new thing around 19880.

At least that was the way it was in our little corner of the world.