Today I pulled into a petrol station to fill my car. Got out, grabbed the nozzle and stuck it in my tank and a fellow came running out tutting his finger at me. Huh? Whut? Well, it turned out this was one of the original Service-stations, where they actually provide the service of filling your tank. I was blown away. I haven’t encountered a ‘service’ station (we call them servos in Aus) that does this in probably 50-odd years, when self-service pumps became the norm. .
Do you have any ‘servos’ who actually pump your gas for you anymore?
This still happens in New Jersey (there’s a law, I believe). That’s the last time I had my gas tank filled by an attendant, when we were traveling from our home in VA to go to my grandmother’s funeral in NY. That was in 1993, I think.
And in Oregon, sort of. Self service was banned for decades until a year or three ago when the law was changed to allow for both self service and full service to be offered at all filling stations. You can pump your own or have a pump jockey do it.
Up until maybe 5 years ago there was a filling station here locally owned by an old guy who ran his station like a true old-school filling station. Customers would pull up to the pump – setting off little pneumatic bells in the service bay, of course – and a couple of guys would come out and not only fill the fuel tank but check the tire pressure and wash the windows and check the oil level, topping all of them as needed. It was outstanding service. When he died and the station shuttered many, many locals were quite saddened. It the end of an era.
I remember it from my childhood and teen years (50s and 60s) and since I grew up in Oregon (which had the same law as New Jersey until, I believe, it was voted out recently) into my 20’s until I left for California. In the 50s, not only would they fill up the tank (after asking how much you wanted of what kind of gas) but they would usually wipe the windshield (not always improving its cleanliness) and show you your oil dipstick reading so you didn’t get low on oil (which they were hoping to sell you some of). I don’t think a dipstick just a couple of minutes after a car was turned off would give you an accurate reading, but nobody seemed to question the practice at the time. Later on, the level of service diminished until all they did was fill the tank. I always preferred to do it myself.
Up until COVID, more or less, there were still two gas stations near me in the western suburbs of Chicago (both of them were Amoco originally, then became BP) which each still had one pump at which one could have an attendant pump your gas.
Both of them also still did auto repairs, which may have also been part of the distinction. But, in the past few years, both of the stations closed the repair part of their businesses, and stopped offering to pump gas.
The last time I saw this was in the mid-90s. There was a Texaco on 75 in central Dallas that was a full service station. I stopped there once on the way home from work. Since the price was significantly higher (and I can pump gas just fine), I never stopped there again.
Hehehe, I am a tobacco and Dr. Pepper addict. Set the trigger to automatically shut off when it’s full, then go inside to the warmth or air conditioning and grab supplies.
My closest gas station until about 10 years ago was a full service Petro-Can with a car wash, The manager used to walk out of the office periodically with his binoculars to see what price the Shell (self serve) up the street had on their sign.
Since then many other stations have closed and I can’t think of any new ones in the area. The closed stations are either condos or still brownfield with ongoing soil remediation.
Much like the Dodo bird, they have gone completely extinct in the Chicagoland area. In fact, since I first got my license in '99, I’ve never even seen one.
The rules in the UK say that a self service station needs to have a canopy. Back in the 60’s and 70’s when self serve pumps were becoming popular, the cost to build a canopy was too much for a lot of the smaller family owned stations. Most of them ended up selling to the larger chains or just going out of business. (Almost as if the rules had been written to benefit such large companies. But that’s a cynical take surely?)
A few remained as full service, usually in more rural areas where the lack of competion justified the higher price. But the owners are now mostly quite old and either retiring or dying. There’s 2 within a few miles of me that closed down during covid lockdowns and never reopened. So they are getting rarer.
Wales seems to have quite a few, even in mid size towns not just in the middle of nowhere. I had to use one back in 2022 and it really felt strange.
From time to time when I am really in a hurry I wish I could just hop out and fill up, but those moments are rare. It’s so convenient to pull up and have some guy come and run my card and fill the tank. And when it’s done, nobody ever complains if I just hop out, stow the nozzle, grab my receipt and get on my way.
The OP described a “full service” station at which the attendant filled the tank. That’s unusual enough that I (who has been driving for perhaps forty years) has experienced it perhaps a handful of times, mostly while traveling in New Jersey. But what you’re describing is well beyond that. It’s so unexpected that even in the 1985 movie Back to the Future, when Marty McFly first gets to town in 1955, he watches a car pull up to the Texaco station, where a team of four rush up to offer the service (scene here on YouTube. So even forty years ago, it was something well in the past.
I have vague memories of seeing that kind of “full service” experience when I was a kid. I don’t remember a whole team, but the guy who filled up the tank would also check the tires and the oil.
I also remember my dad would pay with his fancy “charge card,” which involved signing something with multiple carbon copies, and the attendant putting the card into a little gizmo and sliding a lever across it to make an impression of the card number.
Yes, I remember those credit card impression machines. I think some stores kept them until recently in case the computers went down but now many credit cards lack the embossed numbers.
