r/EconomicHistory • u/Present_Juice4401 • 1d ago

Discussion Why did full service gas stations disappear across the US starting in the 1970s?

Post image
7 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

22

u/gears127 1d ago

Why pay an attendant when the customer will self serve? A lot like self checkout.

12

u/Akerlof 1d ago

Also like self checkout: There are always more pumps than attendants, and waiting at an open pump is just as frustrating as standing in line between two unmanned registers.

9

u/Present-Permit-6743 1d ago

Head to New Jersey on the Dirty Jersey Turnpike. They are alive in well.

6

u/Ok-Cry5150 1d ago

Required by law there

1

u/DueClub8162 21h ago

Throughout the entire state, except and only expect if you have a large diesel truck then you can pump it yourself

2

u/musing_codger 8h ago

I always found it weird that, while New Jersey doesn't trust it's citizens to pump their own gas, other states let people from New Jersey do it when visiting. I think we should listen to New Jersey and ban people from NJ from pumping their own gas wherever they go.

0

u/mapoftasmania 12h ago

And gas prices are usually at the low end compared to the rest of the country - $4.09 a gallon at the end of my street. So it doesn’t make it more expensive. And it’s great when it’s below freezing…

2

u/AwarenessGreat282 8h ago

lol...NJ prices have nothing to do with the pumping, it's the taxes. It's not hard to see that a full serve station is going to have additional employees and their salary, benefits, etc. cost that station money. Higher expenses mean higher prices.

0

u/mapoftasmania 7h ago

More jobs and lower gas taxes is the right trade off to make.

1

u/AwarenessGreat282 26m ago

The taxes would be the same regardless of whether you pump it or someone else does. Just think of how much lower the gas prices could be. The smart thing is to make it an option, and the natural market will make the decision. Or should the gov't dictate everything?

6

u/none-plenty 1d ago

We still had them in Oregon until a few years ago… in fact we couldn’t pump our own fuel and had to use full-service.

3

u/SicarioCercops 1d ago

Oil shock probably used as an opportunity to cut costs.

4

u/Exotic_Dust692 1d ago

New underground storage tank regulations probably helped eliminate the single or family owned gas station owners.

3

u/CarolinCLH 1d ago

Because you saved a few cents a gallon if you pumped it yourself and the gas station didn't have to pay for so many attendants. At first they would have both full service islands and cheaper self service islands. Everyone went to the self service islands.

3

u/Luftgekuhlt_driver 23h ago

This. It cost more to use the full service pump.

3

u/mbcarrol 20h ago

Yes. Once self service became cheaper nobody used full service anymore

1

u/92xSaabaru 7h ago

Ironically, the cheapest gas station near me is Full Service. I was later told that you're expected to tip the attendant though.

1

u/Danmont88 23h ago

More than anything it was the oil/gas shortage. Doing away with the gas attendant, it was alleged that it would lower the price of gas.
It was a big phycological event when gas went over a dollar a gallon.
I think it is a scam anyway they do it.

1

u/transitoryInflation 22h ago

Probably Bretton Woods

1

u/BodybuilderHefty333 17h ago

They disappeared in the early 1990s because of credit card processing. Before people paid for gas with cash.

1

u/02meepmeep 9h ago

Because of the oil embargo gas prices made it so no one wanted to pay extra for full service.

1

u/Digital_Simian 7h ago

Self-service was the cheaper option and when having the choice, people went to self-service pumps more often than not. The nail in the coffin was the convenience store. Part of the advantage of full-service stations was not having to leave your vehicle. The convenience store added shopping to the stop and full-service customers weren't going into the store and making impulse purchases.

1

u/edthesmokebeard 1d ago

engagement farming bot. blocked.

1

u/Reasonable-Meal-7684 20h ago

Why
Because they couldn't outsource the job to India or Philippines :-)

0

u/playdohplaydate 16h ago

Because no one is as cool as NJ

0

u/InfiniteMonkeys157 9h ago

It's no mystery. Banks developed ATMs that could scan paper currency. Shortly after, gas stations, car washes, and other types of purchases became automated.

And while it might seem like simple job stealing, it allowed for isolated gas stations to be put on long stretches of road where there were no towns or even crossroads, where gas stations had previously not been financially viable. It also created a new class of jobs for people collecting money and servicing the stations.

With a proliferation of stations, people traveling around to collect/service, but no people working at the stations, I can't guess whether there was net loss or gain of jobs. But the appearance of automated gas stations was not simply because gas stations were too cheap to pay minimum wage employees.