The passage of the Act was motivated by something a little less pure than safety: money. In the s, when self-service was unheard of in most of the country, a gas station owner named Irving Reingold offered lower prices to customers willing to pump their own gas.
The gimmick was wildly popular and soon became a threat to competing gas stations. According to Bergen County's The Record , "rival station owners reacted by persuading state lawmakers to outlaw self-serve," and the state legislature made Reingold's tactics illegal. As more and more states around the country began to offer self-serve gas stations in the s and '80s, New Jersey stayed put.
Nowadays, some politicians will even refer to the matter as a source of state identity and pride. A couple of local municipalities outside of New Jersey also ban self-serve gas stations. Oregon lifted its statewide ban for two days in June due to a heat wave. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close.
Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Fuel Efficiency. Fuel Consumption. In New Jersey, a gas station attendant like this one is required to pump your gas for you.
But why? Now That's a Gas. That meant I had to go to the morgue. No, not the one where they keep dead bodies. I'm talking about the morgue in the basement of the Star-Ledger building. In the newspaper racket, a "morgue" is what we call our library of past clippings. It was there that I dug up the story of Irving Reingold. Here is how I recounted it in a column back then:.
Reingold, a workaholic who took time out only to fly his collection of World War II fighter planes, started the crisis by doing something gas station owners hated: He lowered prices. Fifty-one years ago, gas was selling at The price was rigged by a gentlemen's agreement among gas station owners. He offered gas at The only requirement was that drivers pump it themselves. They didn't mind. They lined up for blocks. Someone tried shooting up Reingold's station. But he installed bulletproof glass, so the retailers looked for a softer target - the Statehouse.
The Gasoline Retailers Association prevailed upon its pals in the Legislature to push through a bill banning self-serve gas. The pretext was safety, but the Hackensack fire chief had already told all who would listen that Rein- gold's operation was perfectly safe. Journalists howled. Reingold got out of gas and moved on to other endeavors, such as revolutionizing the sport-fishing business in Florida with boats that were bigger and more luxurious than anyone had seen. His daughter Roni told me that on his deathbed he was still angry about the way the politicians ran him out of business.
It's amazing that New Jersey consumers could still be suffering in the Internet era from a crooked deal that went through in the pre-television era. And that, boys and girls, is how we got the ban on self-service gas that exists to this day.
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