Why New Jersey and Oregon still don’t let you pump your own gas
But not people in New Jersey and Oregon. They’re not allowed to touch the gas nozzle. Seriously.
So why don’t New Jersey and Oregon let you pump your own gas? And what happened to the days of gas station attendants filling up your tanks in the rest of the country?
It’s a strange, complex history that dates back more than a century.
Self-service bans
The United States has experimented with self-service gas since the first stations were built in the early 1900s. Yet it wasn’t until about 1980 that self-service became the primary gas station model in this country.
“Their rise to the top was not a smooth one,” write Ronald Johnson and Charles Romeo in a 2000 study on the growth of self-service.
The earliest self-service gas pumps in the United States appeared around 1915. They were designed primarily for emergencies or for after dark when gas stations were closed. People would pre-pay with coins to operate them.
Full-service gas stations adamantly opposed self-service. They saw cheaper, self-service gas as a competitive threat to their business and wanted to limit its spread.
Fuel sales have slim profit margins. Gas stations made their money and distinguished their brands by offering a variety of services such as oil and battery checks, windshield wiping and vehicle repairs. Station attendants in full uniforms — some wearing bow ties — filled up customers’ tanks, a key part of their larger service strategy to attract drivers in the first half of the 20th century.
Full-service gas stations played up safety hazards around self-service, arguing that untrained drivers would overfill their tanks and start a fire. With support from local fire marshals, gas stations lobbied state legislators to pass bans on self-service. By 1968, self-service was banned in 23 states.
It was not until the success of self-service internationally and a crucial change in gas stations’ business model that self-service began replacing attendants in the United States.
“Modern self-service gas stations actually were pioneered in Sweden,” said Matt Anderson, the curator of transportation at The Henry Ford museum in Michigan. “Drivers there paid less for self-service than for full-service. From there the concept spread through Europe.”
At the same time, vehicle warranties began to stipulate that cars must be serviced at dealerships, a shift that eroded gas stations’ service and repair business.
“Traditional full-service gas stations lost their profit center in automotive repairs and were forced to change their method of operation,” said Wayne Henderson, the author of the book “One Hundred Years of Gas Stations.”
Gas stations had to look for new ways to grow profit. They moved to self-service, which reduced their costs and increased volumes on gas sales, and they diversified into selling food, tobacco, coffee, snacks and other items with higher margins.
Self-service “ended up being more popular because it…
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