When Jordan Mauldin drove up to Eugene as a University transfer student from the Bay Area last year, the absence of a sales tax was not the only shocking experience she and her family had as they pulled up to a gas pump in Southern Oregon.  
“Someone came and tapped on my window, and I felt so scared,” Mauldin, a University senior, said. “I thought they were going to mug me. I didn’t know why they were there, but when they said that they were going to pump the gas, it was nice because I didn’t have to get out.”
For many who drive through the state for the first time, the experience is just as novel, because Oregon and New Jersey are the only two states that have a gasoline dispensing statute that makes it illegal for drivers to pump their own gas and require an attendant trained in safety procedures to pump the gas for them.
According to the statute that was passed in 1951, “an owner, operator or employee of a filling station, service station, garage or other dispensary where Class 1 flammable liquids … are dispensed at retail may not permit any person other than the owner, operator or employee to use or manipulate any pump, hose, pipe or other device for dispensing the liquids into the fuel tank of a motor vehicle or other retail container.”
The law also cites a wide range of reasons in favor of full-service pumping, including the reduction of “fire hazards,” dangers of “crime and slick surfaces,” health hazards from “exposure to toxic fumes,” and discrimination against both “customers with lower incomes” and elderly or disabled customers who would typically be charged “significantly higher prices” for full-service where self-service pumping is permitted.
If convicted of illegally dispensing gasoline, an individual may be fined up to $500 for each offense. Despite several legal challenges, the constitutionality of the law has been upheld several times; however, amendments to the law have been made over the years.
In 2001, the Bike Political Action Committee of Oregon spearheaded a campaign that called for an amendment that would permit motorcyclists to dispense their own gas. Brian Stovall, the group’s co-founder and advisor, said some motorcyclists were disenfranchised by the law when gasoline was spilled on their motorcycles by station attendants.
“There is a group of motorcyclists who live motorcycles, whose motorcycles are treasured objects and not just something you ride cheap to work,” Stovall said. “They will put on multi-thousand-dollar paint jobs and custom graphics on their motorcycle and they don’t want some gas jockey that only has a job pumping gas because Oregon requires gas jockeys that don’t care how they dispense gas. When he pulls that nozzle out and sloshes gas all over my tank when I have a custom paint job and I know that is going to damage it, am I going to let him touch my motorcycle? No!”
After lobbying during one Senate session, the bill was overwhelmingly passed and signed into law by current Governor-elect John Kitzhaber, who was the governor at the time.
However, not everyone agrees that station attendant jobs are a negative effect of the law.
“I get the point of how the law gives people jobs, but I think it’s more of a state issue,” Mauldin said. “It doesn’t really bother me either way, but if it’s needed to create jobs, then so be it.”
Some Oregon residents agree, while question the reasoning for the law.
“I really don’t think pumping gas is that difficult,” University senior Julia Whisenant said. “I don’t even know why that’s even a law in Oregon, but I guess it provides jobs, which is helpful.”
For some Oregonians, the skill of pumping gasoline is not acquired until they are forced to pump their own gas when they travel out of the state.
Mary Popish, a University sophomore, recently learned how to pump gas for the first time this year while on a road trip with some of her friends in Washington.
“It was strange, because I’m not used to it,” Popish said. “I really didn’t know how to do it, but luckily my friend is going to school up there, so she taught me how to pump gas. I’m 20 now, and I just pumped gas for the first time over the summer, and I think that’s older than if I lived in a place where I had to pump my own gas.”
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