WINDSOR, N.D. -- Thanks to gasoline and diesel prices moving above $4 per gallon, petroleum equipment suppliers are reporting a surge in demand for gear that will allow older fuel dispensers, which use mechanical reels instead of digital readouts, to display prices up to $9.99 a gallon. The result is a waiting list that can last two months or more, industry officials said, according to the Associated Press.
In some states, regulators are attempting to work around rules that require gas station and convenience store fuel pumps to display per-gallon prices. Older, unmodified fuel pumps often [image-nocss] cannot show prices higher than $4 a gallon, said the report.
"It's a significant problem," Mike Rud, director of the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers Association, told AP. "In some of the outlying rural areas, this might be the only pump in town that people can access."
One of them sits just outside the Windsor Bar, a central North Dakota hamlet of just 14 people. The pump cannot handle a price higher than $4. Windsor is a few hundred yards north of Interstate 94, and the pump often serves more than a dozen customers daily, said Joyce Staloch, who sold the Windsor Bar last year and now works there part time.
North Dakota's Public Service Commission recently notified stations that their mechanical pumps could display fuel prices by the half-gallon if a sign was posted alerting customers that they would owe twice the amount shown. Pump operators will have to install a permanent solution by April 2009, Kevin Hanson, the commission's assistant director of testing and safety, told AP.
In Minnesota, rural station owners whose pumps cannot display the right price are being told to cover up the incorrect numbers. "The consumer can only see the gallons turning," said Bill Walsh, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Commerce. "Then they just have to settle up with a calculator, basically."
South Dakota's Department of Public Safety is preparing similar rules, said David Pfahler, the agency's director of weights and measures.
Most stations have fuel pumps that use digital numbers and can be easily adjusted to accommodate soaring fuel prices, industry officials said. But mechanical pumps that use internal wheels to show prices are still fairly common in rural areas that sell smaller amounts of fuel, Robert Renkes, director of the Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI), told AP. He estimated that about 8,500 stations have mechanical pumps. "We keep thinking they'll disappear, but they're still around," he said.
Most mechanical pumps cannot display prices above $4 a gallon without the installation of a new computer unit that can go up to $9.99, said Pete Turner, COO for APS Petroleum Equipment Inc. of Anniston, Ala. The equipment costs about $350. It costs less to change the pump to raise the maximum price from $2.99 to $3.99 a gallon, but that option increases the risk of a breakdown, Turner told AP. "The computer that they're upgrading was not designed to go any more than what it's going now, and if you do it, they don't last long enough," he said. "They run so fast that the gears are wearing out."
Installing digital pumps would solve the price-display problem, but many rural fuel dealers do not make enough money to justify the expense, said Jeff Engel, the sales manager for Hobbs Inc., an equipment dealer in Mandan, N.D. "They can't afford to put in $13,000 to $14,000 for a new gas pump," he said, according to the report.
State regulators are handling the problem in different ways, Judy Cardin, the chair of the National Conference on Weights & Measures, told AP. She is Wisconsin's chief of weights and measures.
National standards agencies discourage the "half-pricing" that is being allowed in North Dakota and other states where obsolete fuel pumps are more common, Cardin said. "Every time the price of gas starts climbing, we run into this situation," she said. "Definitely, in some of the states, in the more rural areas, they will continue to face it."Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.