But would such a station really be considered an independent one? I think it’s reasonable to say that if a station has a contract with BigOilCo to sell exclusively that company’s fuels, then it’s a BigOilCo franchisee, not an independent one - even if the physical facilities are owned by someone else, who can also decide on pricing policies.
Where I live (Germany), this is still predominant: You pump your own gas, then walk into the store to pay there. Some pumps have card readers, but most people habitually walk into the store. I’ve always wondered whether people driving away without paying are a major problem, but I suppose CCTV surveillance takes care of that.
We got a little off track here! Still some interesting posts.
Most of us do not have any full-service gas stations anymore. My question was - how much more do you think we’d have to pay to have someone pump our gas? For those that do have both full-service and pump your own, is there a difference in the price of gas?
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised to hear that the cost of full service would be factored into the price of the gas. Wouldn’t these gas station attendants be tipped workers? I would think that the situation would evolve along the same lines as waiters, where the wages paid by employers would be very low and the income of employees would mostly consist of tips. So I guess it would turn out to be the same price for the gas as for self-service stations, and the cost of full service to customers would be the tip, which might be something around, say, $5 for a complete fill.
My recollection is that it was about 5 cents per gallon difference in the old days. Wages have increased since then, and you’d just have to figure out how many gallons a worker could be expected to pump in an hour. I have no clue, maybe 300 to 400 gallons? If so, at 10 cents per gallon extra, that would yield $30 to $40 in increased revenue. Enough to pay an employee $15/hr
Back in the day, I don’t remember ever tipping the guy who pumped my gas. If it came to $9.80 I might have given him a ten and driven off rather than waiting for change.
I keep thinking back to the actual problem here, from the first line of the OP:
I read that far and immediately thought “I want to drive into a huge filling area that’s warm, with no wind.” Maybe the solution is as simple as surrounding the covered pump area with plastic (with those vertical slits, like you drive through to get into many car washes).
Hmmm, what if the station just had multiple car wash lanes, with an anteroom that had a gas pump (and an attendant?).
But since this is my fantasy, I want to drive into… a huge warehouse with plenty of ventilation and huge heaters.
Let’s make it tropical-themed, where you’re met by a waiter: “Good morning, sir. Let me take your coat while you relax in this massaging beach chaise. Would you care for a vodka Bloody Mary, or a virgin one? While your car is fully serviced, I’ll be bringing you a tray of assorted pastries, but you can also visit our Caribbean Buffet Bar.”
I wouldn’t want to count on tips from a population that (generalizing) focuses like a starving hawk on every fluctuation in the price of gasoline or diesel. People who don’t blink at the price of a gallon of milk, or who throw money around in a bar, seem to blanch or curse at a few cents per gallon more than their last fill-up. People seem more generous when they’re paying a restaurant bill, and thus tipping their server, than when they’re filling-up.
In OR (where it’s all full-serve), tipping does happen but it’s pretty rare. We’re calling it “full-serve” but it’s not like the old days where they check your oil and wash your windows. Here it’s pump the gas and nothing else.
You mention plenty of ventilation later in your post, and that’s really the big issue (aside from the expense of an enclosed building). I used to work in environmental remediation, and we’d be in respirators at sites with better air quality than what you find at a typical outdoor gas station. The heater wouldn’t be able to keep up with a ventilation system good enough to keep the air clean.
There are a few places near here that have both self-serve and full-serve pumps, and in those cases the self-serve is usually 10-20 cents per gallon cheaper. But the majority of the full-serve only stations around here are independent and their prices are often equal to or cheaper than the big brand self-serve stations.
Perfectly understandable–who buys milk 20-30 gallons at a time?
I live in Oregon. Small counties of I think less than 30k people can pump their own gas from 6pm to 6am when the gas station may be closed and not be manned by an attendant. So I pump my own gas all the time day or night, nobody gives a shit anymore. New regulations are slowly making their way through the system and I expect that Oregon will have both options available everywhere soon.
Trust me, as soon as it’s humanly possible all the pump jockeys will be let go and there will no longer be an option to stay in your warm car during an ice storm. Camel has its nose in the tent and pretty soon there’ll be camel shit everywhere. Just one more way Oregon is going to shit.
Technically, the 48 other states all have both options available everywhere, so we can see where it would go for Oregon, once both options become available everywhere.
“Technically” that may be so, in that according to the ADA a customer has the right to request assistance with pumping gas, but I can assure you that when I was the only person working my gas station I was 100% not allowed to leave my cash register for any reason without completely locking up the store portion, which meant that no, a disabled person would NOT get full service at a station with minimal staffing and it also meant that I commonly had to do an entire eight hour shift without being able to take a piss. So forgive me if I’m skeptical that it will be possible to get my gas pumped for me should the legislature cave and allow self service–sure, it might “technically” be an option but practically I expect I’d be forced to wait for a half hour at the pump before someone leisurely wambled their way out there. With the expectation that eventually I’ll get sick of waiting and pump my own gas.
I recently stopped at a gas station in Hood River during normal business hours and there wasn’t an attendant around. I think some stations are going to fully self-serve.
They loosened the rules for when and where you could self-serve at the start of the pandemic. Technically that expired a long time ago, but many places didn’t bother going back to the official rules.
It depends on how you look at it. One way or another an independent station has to buy it’s fuel from a BigOilCo. There’s not a line you can get into at the fuel terminal that puts out generic fuel, it’s all branded. What I got with going with a single supplier was that they paid for all new signage and dispensers/pumps for all four of my stations. That was 72 replacements for 20+year old dispensers. Plus all the peripheral stuff like garbage cans, windshield washer buckets, rolling step ladders for truckers. And they took care of all the upkeep on that, I never had to purchase nozzles or hoses again. And wholesale prices were always about the same no matter what company you bought from, although they went up and down almost daily.
To get back on topic, pricing in the old days in my area was always a five cent bump between grades. For example, unleaded - $1.00, midgrade- 1.05, premium - $1.10. Full service would add ten cents across the board. I notice in the last few years that the spread between unleaded and premium is often a lot wider. Midgrade seems to have mostly died out.
I’m 61yo. Live in Colorado. My Wife and I have driven cross country many times. Not too long ago we passed through 17 states. Not one had attendants. Haven’t seen a gas station attendant in 30 years or so.
What aggravates me is those stupid useless pay by the quarter air pumps.
In California, you can get air for free if you just bought gas there. It’s the law.