What I was told ( no first hand knowledge), by people who were in the business before me in my area, was that in the beginning of the self serve era (late '60's / early '70's) opportunistic independent marketers would target full service major brand stations by getting the closest available lot, bringing in above ground tanks, set up some pump islands, and kill their gas sales with cheap unbranded gasoline and minimal investment.
I don't know what branch of state government regulated retail motor fuel sales at that time, probably weights and measures, but this type of enterprise was regulated away.
Nowadays, in my state, EPA has delegated its authority to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, and I don't know what ADEQ policy is on above ground tanks, or if they even permit them.
Even if they did, I wouldn't want them. At a minimum, you would have to have a berm big enough to contain the entire contents of the tank if its integrity got compromised to avoid liability problems under other federal acts, I would expect there would have to be some provisions to protect against static discharges, you would be working against gravity to fill them, you would still need underground delivery lines to the dispensers, and the tank farm would have to be protected from crashes by motorists because if there is anyway somebody can run a car into it, somebody will run a car into it, and, around here, people would probably shoot at them with small arms. Finally, you would have to have some way of keeping people from stealing the gas out of them.
You really don't have any of these issues with underground tanks, they are safe and secure, when they are registered and properly maintained, there is a trust fund that pays for cleanup of any leaks after the owner pays a deductible, so I can't really see any investor wanting to use aboveground tanks in a retail automotive motor fuel station.
My wholesale cost for 87 AKI and 91 AKI dropped $0.0425 today, btw.
