Are essential services becoming less common in rural areas?

Here in north central Oklahoma, there are numerous small town gas stations that have been shuttered. My friends recently gave up on theirs, and it is now for sale. They couldn't sell the volume needed to keep up with the gas station prices closer to the big highways and interstates. I tend to buy local even when the price is higher because I am trying to keep local businesses, but when the price difference is over 30 cents a gallon, it makes sense on my small teacher pay to drive the additional 10 miles on the way to work. Smaller towns need to find ways to diversify to stay in business.

This has been going on, really, forever. I notice it now that I am back living in the town where I grew up. When I was a girl here, folks weren't ready to go as far for many services, so we had multiple doctors, dentists, lawyers, two grocery stores, several corner stores, etc., etc. There were even two small private hospitals. Now hardly anything. Can't have it both ways: if I'm OK with driving 45 minutes to the big mall, I have to be OK with having no dress shop in town. Many people did commute a long ways to work. In those days, Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Bausch & Lomb, etc., etc. in nearby Rochester hired thousands. It was worth the drive. People used to say they'd spend two hours a day (or more) on the road, but at home, it made them rich people. They shopped at home as much as on the road coming or going. No more.