Gas Tank Fill Location All Wrong

George Orwell · 2007-11-14T23:29:38+00:00

Have you taken notice that some cars have the gas fill opening on thedriver's side and others have it located on the passenger's side? Eitherway, there is only one way you can drive up to the pumps. The pump'stransfer hose must be on the side of the gas fill opening. This isinconvenient at a busy gas station where your available spot may not fityour car's configuration. Today's gas pumps have short hoses that cannotreach around to the opposite side of your car.A long time ago, some cars were fitted with a central, rear-bumper locationfor universal gas fill, under the license plate. That location isconsidered unsafe today.My suggestion is that all cars be fitted with TWO gas fill access, one onthe left rear quarter panel and the other on the right. Then, you coulddrive up to a gas pump from either direction and pump gas.Sure, it will cost a few dollars to add this feature, but so what? Thedozens of added features to cars already cost and nobody's complaining. Atleast, this suggestion makes good sense, more sense than many costlyfeatures that do little or nothing for comfort or safety: radio controls onthe steering wheel, for example. Cars now cost 10 times what they used towithin the lifetime of people still in the workforce, so I say, so what ifa two-way gas filler costs an extra $5 or $10 to the auto maker andtranslated into $10 or $20 more retail?Il mittente di questo messaggio|The sender address of thisnon corrisponde ad un utente |message is not related to a realreale ma all'indirizzo fittizio|person but to a fake address of andi un sistema anonimizzatore |anonymous systemPer maggiori informazioni |For more info

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Ted Mittelstaedt 18 years ago

Huh?

There's still unemployment in OR. And I don't know any minimum wage jobs where the employees get insurance and benefits.

What your missing Bill is that retail gas prices differ from station to station depending on a number of factors OTHER than labor. As a point of fact, the biggest difference is due to pumped volume. The oil companies have rate schedules setup that give significantly lower prices to the higher pumping stations.

About a year ago the local paper interviewed the owner of the 5 highest pumping stations in the Portland Metro area to find out his secret. It was really very simple. The guy had figured out that gas prices were extremely price sensitive and differences of even a penny a gallon would cause dramatic differences in pumped volume. So what the guy would do is he would wake up at 3:00am every morning and drive around to all his stations, then drive past all the other gas stations that were within a few miles of his stations, and he would set his price to be at minimum a penny lower than the lowest price of any of his competitors. He did this every morning, 7 days a week, and as a result he had the highest pumped volume, and therefore was able to buy gas wholesale cheaper than anyone else, and thus, even though his prices were lower than everyone else, he made a profit. He wasn't particularly concerned with explaining all of this because in his words the other station owners were too lazy to get off their asses and look at their competitors prices, so he was not worried about them trying to beat him at his own game. His only regret was that none of his sons or daughters was really that interested in the gas station business, and he figured that when he died, that his kids would sell off the stations and that would be the end of his business.

If you really want to rail against this self-service ban you need to be railing at the oil companies. If they didn't do this fiddle-faddle with the wholesale pricing then all the station owners in a market would be buying fuel at the same cost, and then perhaps labor would become a more significant cost of business and eliminating it would perhaps actually make a difference in pump prices. But, as it is now, the pump prices are set by volume, and pumped volume of a station is not that related to the labor costs.

Ted

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Tom 18 years ago

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Tom 18 years ago

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Jeff 18 years ago

Stop trying to read minds. It doesn't work.

Try here:

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It depends. In New Jersey and Oregon, it is a way for the gas stations to get free gas out of the filler necks of their costumers.

Jeff

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Edwin Pawlowski 18 years ago

Maybe where you live, but here in CT we have zone pricing. The same truck delivers gas to three stations but they all sell at a different price because of their location. If they can get more, they do. Near the MA border, prices are lower to compete with the 20¢ less in taxes. In the inner cities where they know the poor will not be traveling around, they get some of the highest prices. Some higher volume stations near the main highways are higher than the little guy up the road a bit.

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Edwin Pawlowski 18 years ago

Notice where I said "When you back out the tax differences"? I'm talking pure pre-tax selling price.

It was not credit card companies, but card holders of Mobile, Exxon, etc. They were charging more for using their own cards with the idea that it put more of the actual cost on the people using them. In reality, it should be that way. I get a 5% discount at my shoe store for paying cash. I like that.

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Ted Mittelstaedt 18 years ago

A dumbed-down site for people who don't understand how their vehicle works.

I don't know about your car but on both of my Chrysler vans, the evap line comes off the top of the fuel tank, where the access to the fuel pump is. The line is run to the front of the car where the charcoal canister is along with the various vacuum valves that control it. Part of the line is run HIGHER than the fuel filler opening on the side of the van. So fail to see exactly how topping off will make the fuel level in the evap line rise above the level of the gas cap.

Furthermore, the entire evap system is sealed - and the evap recovery system vents into the intake manifold. I highly doubt any liquid gas that gets into the system is going to NOT be burned in the intake manifold.

Except that when Sweden studied that supposition, they found that there was no measuring error in gas dispensing when topping off UNLESS there was splashback from the gas filler pipe. See here:

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In other words, if you buy a gallon of fuel unless your topping off causes spashback, the amount of gas that is obtained by the station from recovering your vapors is not enough to reduce that gallon by any measurable amount.

In any case the only time I've been topped off in Oregon is when going to a gas station that only takes cash (ie: Arco) and the pump stops at something like $19.86 and the station attendant wants to make it an even $20 so they don't have to make change. And I don't generally buy gas from those stations, I buy from stations where I can use plastic, and I've never been topped off at one of those.

The real concern, as I ALREADY MENTIONED is morons being so agressive about topping off that they cause splashback. And, if you do the research you will find out that the biggest concern about splashback is the fear that the gas station evap. system will suck liquid fuel back into the vapor recovery system at the gas station, causing it damage. It's pretty clear that the FUD about damaging vehicle vapor recovery systems as a result of topping off is just that - FUD. The gas station owners know that just asking people to refrain from topping off because it might hurt the station equipment isn't going to be an appeal that will get any traction. So instead they invented this bogyman that if you top off your going to damage your car, so don't do it, to appeal to people's self-interest.

Quite obviously, splashback causes a spill, and the pollution from the gas evaporating from the spill is what matters, that and any pollution that might be caused by a gas station evap recovery system that had been damaged by sucking liquid gas - from splashback.

Ted

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Ted Mittelstaedt 18 years ago

Well of course we also have zone pricing but it's limited to the lower volume stations. I live within 2 miles of a high volume Astro station at a major intersection - it's prices are always within a few cents of the other high volume stations in the greater metro area. I can count probably about 10 stations like this that are within a mile of the places that I normally drive by when commuting. However, all other stations have much higher prices. There's a total of 3 stations I pass by when going to I84 (part of my commute) that are low-volume. One of these is a cash-only place and because of that they are able to stay within 2 cents higher than the high volume stations. The other 2 are at least 10 cents sometimes higher than any of the high volume stations, one time I saw one at 20 cents higher. One of those was playing the "cash discount" game where they advertised a lower price that was cash-only, and the higher credit card price was in a sign that was almost completely obscured by bushes, until the AG threatened to sue them unless they knocked it off - now they just have 1 price. Although even doing this their cash-only price was still higher than that of a high volume station

1/2 mile away.

In other areas of the metro area the same thing abounds. You can tell the low volume stations by the few number of pumps and the fewer number of cars that are always in them. I don't exactly know why anyone goes to them - but some do. A few of these stations do vehicle repair and obviously they make their living doing that, not selling gas. Some of the others have extensive beer refrigerators and I assume make their money selling that.

But in general, the high volume stations are all within 2-3 cents of each other and this is true just about every day of the year, no matter where the stations are located. But for every one of those stations, there's at least 5 more than are low volume stations which usually are no less than 10-15 cents a gallon higher.

Ted

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Jeff 18 years ago

Good service? Costumer loyalty? Going to a neighborhood store?

Jeff

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My Name Is Nobody 18 years ago

There is no training.

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My Name Is Nobody 18 years ago

You have to compare all the variables, besides, there are absolutly different qualities of gas, and Astro sells one of the lowest...

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Bill Putney 18 years ago

I was just going by this post:

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Is it wrong?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

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who 18 years ago

It can be confusing when my LH fills on the right and my wife's Sebring on the left. Two fill pipes would be even more confusing, we wouldn't know which way to go to get back into the drivers seat.

Anyhow the fill hoses do reach around or over our cars.

You must drive a BIG TRUCK.

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Bruce L. Bergman 18 years ago

I drive a full-size van. Left pumps only, no options...

Twin fill necks a good idea, but not practical. The only car that does this is Jaguar, and they can only because the tank is behind the rear seat - and it increases the manufacturing cost of the car by roughly $40 between parts and labor.

On a luxury car people will pay for those fancy details, but you can't give away $40 of decreased profits (or increased retail price) on a mass-produced 'commodity transportation' automobile. The competition has you at a price advantage and they'll eat your lunch.

You can NOT have dual fillers on a car unless it's designed in - Dual fillers on one tank are OK, but you legally can not have dual tanks and a cross-over pipe between them for gasoline fueled vehicles in the USA. They had a few notable incidents with road debris snagging and breaking the crossover line, and a resultant BIG fire.

Dual tanks with separate fillers on each side (and no cross-over) are perfectly legal - but a pain in the ass to live with. I know, that's how my I.H. Scout was built, and the gas stations got very nervous when I slid the hose UNDER the car to hit the other tank. (Didn't want to open both doors and go through the interior.)

If you can't stretch the hose over/across/under the car to the other side, you have to fill one tank, drive around so the other side faces the pump, and fill the other tank. It's only practical when you have both filler necks in the same quadrant of the car.

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Mike hunt 18 years ago

Would a vehicle with two fill necks take twice as much fuel

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Tom 18 years ago

there is a very simple solution to the fuel fill location problem of people being too stupid to know where it is on their cars.

look at the little gas pump on the fuel gauge. if the hose and nozzle is pointing to the right, the fuel fill is on the passenger side of the car. if the hose and nozzle is on the left side of the pump, the fuel fill is on the driver side of the car.

this way, you will not have to worry about getting whiplash snapping your head back and forth looking at the side of the car in your mirrors trying to see the door.

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