Quote:
Originally Posted by Dadhawk
But that's not new. They never changed their laws from before self-service was really a thing. It's not like you could pump your gas, then suddenly you couldn't....
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That's not true. You could pump your own gas up until 1949, and then suddenly you couldn't. The change had 100% to do with typical New Jersey corruption.
Corrupt gas station owners in NJ had gathered under the banner of the Gasoline Retailers Association to illegally fix the gasoline price at 22 cents per gallon. A guy named Irving Reingold didn't like being told how to run his business and refused to join the scheme. He saw an opportunity to compete and get rid of the expense of an attendant by offering a 3 cent discount for self-service. It worked very well, and his station drew business away from the colluders nearby.
The other station owners were horrified and tried to intimidate him into cooperating. They even sent men to shoot up his store. He installed bulletproof glass.
So the GRA wrote the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act, bribed the right legislators and got it passed in 1949 to ban self-service gas on the grounds of "safety." That forced Reingold (and anybody like him who might consider bucking the price fixing scheme) to have to hire attendants and raise his prices. Rather than fight it, he got out of the gas business and moved to Florida.
If it hadn't been for the discount, nobody would have cared, and you'd still be able to pump your own gas in NJ. Now it's just political momentum that keeps that law in place.