Old pumps didn’t count on high prices

REARDAN, Wash. – Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of pumps can’t register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are just scraping by. Many can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers from filling their tanks.

As many as 8,500 of the nation’s 170,000 service stations have old-style meters that need to be fixed – about 17,000 individual pumps, said Bob Renkes, executive vice president of the Petroleum Equipment Institute of Tulsa, Okla.

At Chip Colville’s Chevron station in this Lincoln County town, where men in the family have pumped gas since 1919, three stubby, gray pumps were installed when gas was less than $1 a gallon. They top out at $3.999, only 30 cents above the price of regular gas at the station.

“In small towns, where you don’t have the volume, there’s no way you can afford to pay for the replacements for these old pumps,” Colville said. “It’s just not economically feasible.”

Demand for replacements has caused a monthslong backlog for companies that make or rebuild the mechanical meters – and that’s just for stations that can afford the upgrade.

“The new ones run between $10,000 and $15,000 apiece,” Colville said. “It’s an expense that’s not worth it.”

Mechanical meters can be retrofitted with higher numbers when pump prices climb another dollar. The last time that happened was in 2005.

This time around, owners of the old pumps will need to install another kit that can handle prices up to $4.999, and possibly higher. Industry experts say those changes could cost as much as $650 per pump.

The price of fixing the meters jumped in the past three years because old pumps are being phased out for new electronic pumps and demand for refurbished meters is down, said Al Eichorn, vice president of PMP Corp., which makes the mechanical meters.

The Connecticut company has hired extra employees who are working overtime, but still has a 14-week backlog of orders, Eichorn said.

Colville and about a dozen other service station owners in Washington have received temporary variances from the state to allow them to half-price fuel. They must post signs telling customers that the final price they will pay is twice what the pump meter indicates.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was at a record $3.651 in the Spokane area Monday, while diesel was selling for an