Hooray for Oregon and Jersey

[pitw]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Let's review the legal status of various self-administered tasks in Oregon.

Self-serve suicide (with a doctor's assistance): OK.

Self-service gasoline: Nope.

And at least one of those is going to maintain its status. Although a bill to allow self-service gasoline stations in Oregon was introduced in the current legislative session, the sponsor acknowledges that there aren't enough votes to move it.

Thus Oregon remains one of only two states in which a gasoline pump is off-limits to the average motorist. New Jersey is the other.

For those who have come of motoring age, and have done most of their driving, in the other 48 states, to be told "hands off that pump" seems as stunning and un- natural as to be told you can't grab a loaf of bread off the grocery shelf.

But unless you plan to make it across New Jersey (possible) or Oregon (less likely) on a single tank of gas, plan on staying in your car when you pull into a gas station.

And that's the way Garden Staters like it, according to Bill Dressler, executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline Retailers Association, an adamant opponent of self-serve. New Jersey, he says, had the foresight to see the dangers of inexperienced motorists trying to operate fuel pumps. Gasoline dealers in New Jersey enjoy lower insurance premiums, he contends, and motorists not only pay less for gas there but are spared "the inconvenience of getting out in all kinds of weather."

Those arguments are echoed in a recent editorial in the Medford Mail Tribune, hailing the apparent failure of the latest effort to overturn the self-serve ban in Oregon. The editorial added a few more arguments: Self-serve doesn't save time since customers still have to go into the convenience store to pay for the purchase. There's the problem of frequent topping-off spills and the annoyance of anointing your hands and clothes with Eau de'Petroleum (the paper's coinage). And what about the 7,600 gas-station attendants' jobs?

Many of these arguments seem a little shaky. The landscape does not appear to be littered with stations and cars incinerated by motorists unable to handle a fuel pump (and Oregon does allow motorcyclists to pump their own gas). Avoiding bad weather -- the motorists of New Jersey and Oregon can't be such hothouse flowers that they can't endure five minutes in the elements to pump gas -- can they? And as for the time factor, apparently news of the wonders of pay-at-the-pump has not made its way to the wilds of Oregon.

The argument over price is muddy at best. Charts from AAA's gas price monitor show that for the past 12 months New Jersey's average price for unleaded has been consistently below the national average, Oregon's consistently above. But then, Oregon charges about a dime a gallon more in taxes than New Jersey. But then again, New Jersey is also home to a lot of refineries.

There's one other oft-heard argument against self-serve -- that it's unfair to seniors and the elderly. It should be noted that I have a measure of self-interest on this point of the debate, being a wheelchair inhabitant myself. The argument has some merit: Depending on the degree and type of disability self-serve pumps are difficult if not impossible to handle. Unwieldy hoses and nozzles and balky gas caps are no fun for many seniors as well.

Yes, I know that in this state the disabled are entitled to get full-service at self-serve prices. Good luck finding a full-service station these days.

Self-service was introduced in, where else, California in 1947, but it really didn't catch on until the 1970s. Price spikes were one reason, but not the only one. Even if there had been no oil shocks, the full-service station would still be an endangered species, because of the improved reliability of cars, the growth of specialized car-service businesses (oil change and muffler shops, for example) and -- sorry, NJ and OR -- the fact that drivers generally like self-serve.

But supposing, for the moment, that self-serve really is as dreadful as opponents suggest. Why then didn't that point of view spread to neighboring states? Dressler says they didn't have the foresight to anticipate the drawbacks.

Yet New York and Pennsylvania somehow remained unswayed over the years despite their proximity to the "foresighted" New Jersey. Same with Washington. Oregon voters were asked in 1982 if they wanted self-serve; they said no. But Bill Bellman, executive for the Washington Oil Marketers Association, says he can't recall self-serve being an issue in this state, and he's been in the business since 1965. "It just evolved," he says.

The fact that Oregon and New Jersey have said no and everywhere else has said yes may come down to no better argument than "that's the way we've always done it."

"In certain states people just want to do things certain ways," says Steve O'Toole, executive director of the Oregon Petroleum Marketers Association.

It's more than license plate design that distinguishes one state from another. It's also the quirks. It's the history, heritage political and social climate that, for example, make an income tax perfectly palatable, and a sales tax political death, in Oregon, but produces exactly the opposite condition just across the Columbia in Washington.

Thus it is just as unlikely that Washington and the other 47 states are going to give up self-serve as it is that Oregon and New Jersey will conform with the rest of the country and let motorists pump their own gas any time soon.

In those two, and the other 48, the market has spoken as to what the bulk of consumers want. The market, it should be remembered, does not always speak with one voice, or say the same thing in every locale.





I hate self serve gas stations with a passion.  I could not believe in my drive through Montana that I could find only two stations [both in small towns] that would fill my tank for me.  Hell most of them wanted my money before they'd give me any gas and believe me that wasn't happening