Self-Service Nation Ends at Garden State Gas Pumps
Changing Law May or May Not Lower Prices; 'New Jersey Is Heaven!'


By BARRY NEWMAN

RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.—People in New Jersey pick their own strawberries. They chop down their own Christmas trees. They check themselves in at airports and check themselves out at supermarkets. Lately, a few New Jerseyans have been wondering whether it isn't about time they were allowed to pump their own gas.

Pumping your own gas is illegal in New Jersey. It has been for 61 years. It's also illegal in Oregon, and in the New York town of Huntington, on Long Island. Just about everywhere else, self-serving Americans do it themselves. As paying at the pump gets easier, the gas station attendant is fast going the way of the elevator operator.



Don't tell Will Corcoran. When you pull into Tim's Westview, a Gulf station across from the train tracks in this north Jersey town, you'll sit in your car while he fills your tank.

Under a cold rain one weekday, he stood at the driver's window of a Chevy, bent over, yakking. He wore blue. His cap had Gulf Oil's orange disk on it. After his customer signed the credit slip (Tim's pumps don't process cards), Mr. Corcoran, 42 years old, shook hands and saluted like a gas jockey in an old commercial.

"People come in for the love of talking," he said as a van with New York plates rolled over the bell hose. At the wheel was Gilbert Grant, an anesthesiologist with a Bluetooth earpiece. "Now I have to wait for the attendant," Dr. Grant said. "What a job." After he drove off, Mr. Corcoran said, "Impatient. I sensed it."

His boss, Tim Arata, is a 47-year-old mechanic with lots of patience. "I'm for full-service," said Mr. Arata. He was in his repair shop, fixing a tire. Self-service, he figures, will let "big oil" into New Jersey to "put the Tim Aratas out of business."

Yet the rhythms of full-service try the patience of the state's newest station owners. Big oil is getting out of the pumping game, in fact. It's selling to people who forsake the repair shop for the convenience store and the high-volume pump island.

The gas-retailing lobby, once the force behind full-service, has split. Its association has given up praising the old filling station's homey virtues. Its least nostalgic members, meanwhile, are making the case for the gas jockey's demise.

Bikram Gill and his partners have bought up 26 New Jersey stations. They don't fix cars; they sell cappuccino. Their burden is finding workers to push the buttons on their self-service pumps. "Any idiot can do it," says Mr. Gill.

If that category includes New Jersey drivers, Mr. Gill figures self-service would let him cut prices by eight cents a gallon. Here's the rub: New Jersey drivers don't necessarily want cheaper gas. Gas here is cheap already.

Oregonians at least know they're paying dearly for their perk. But New Jersey has the country's third-lowest gas tax, after Alaska and Wyoming. Prices are way higher in the pump-your-own states next-door. Who needs self-service?

As Mr. Gill says, "The consumer is thinking, 'I have low prices and I don't have to get out of my car. New Jersey is heaven!'"

A BP station he owns, a 12-pumper, has a busy corner on Route 34 in Matawan, 45 miles south of Tim's. One afternoon, a line of cars awaited the attention of two attendants. Harish Sharma and Jagdeep Singh were working without banter for $9 an hour. Drivers phoned and texted. A few got out to use the ATM.

"I don't know from self-service," said a woman named Karen, pulling up to a pump in a Jeep. "In Jersey you weren't taught it. You go to some other state, you sit there like a dummy."

But one island over, a man named James climbed out of his GMC Suburban and started pumping his own.

Mr. Singh moved to intervene. James blocked him. "This is quicker," he said. When the pump shut off, James kept topping it up. "So I broke the law," he said as Mr. Singh reached in to pull out the receipt and present it.

In 1949, the year New Jersey banned them, America had 200 self-service gas stations. Thirteen other states had banned them, too. (Portsmouth, Va., banned attendants on roller skates.) The fear was that unprofessional pumpers would blow themselves up.
[PUMP]

Calling the New Jersey law "oppressive," two dealers sued. They lost. The state's Supreme Court, upholding the verdict in 1951, declared gasoline inherently "dangerous in use." In 1988, a judge in a lower court ruled the law unconstitutional. An appeals panel cited the 1951 case and reversed him.

In 2006, then Gov. Jon Corzine took another shot at the law, proposing a self-service test on the New Jersey Turnpike. He wanted to watch prices drop, as cost-cutters like Mr. Gill say they will. The dealers' lobby didn't object. But the public did—so loudly that Mr. Corzine ditched his test before it began.

"I wanted it guaranteed that the price will go down," says Pam Fischer, a former state highway-safety director. "If the price doesn't drop, what do I get? The chance to pump my own gas? I know how to do it. It stinks."

In a state with a self-image sometimes in need of bolstering, full service may have attained the status of a cultural entitlement. Which is fine with Will Corcoran, out in the rain at Tim's.

"It's raw today," he was saying.

He grew up six blocks away and spent years as a drummer for a heavy-metal band called Revenant. He toured with Pungent Stench, Napalm Death and Life of Agony. Then he came home and landed at Tim's three years ago.

"I stopped searching for fame," said Mr. Corcoran. A car sped by, honking. He waved. He washes windows, checks tires, earns $500 a week. People give him Dunkin' Donuts gift cards for Christmas.

A truck pulled in. It was Steve Whritenour, a railroad mechanic with a wild beard. "Good guy," said Mr. Corcoran, lifting the nozzle. While his tank filled, Mr. Whritenour said, "I come in here every day or so. It's nice to have somebody to talk to."