Chart: The shrinking jobs of service station attendants

Pay-at-the-pump technology is making some service station attendants redundant – and that’s going to be felt most keenly in rural areas.

BP spokeswoman Leigh Taylor said the company operated on a higher cost model than most fuel companies to offer “continued quality and innovation”. 

The company employed 3000 people nationwide and over the past four years had opened 15 new sites, as well as upgraded a number of existing sites, each employing “in the vicinity of 20 people”. 

But the demand for those employees to help customers pay for gas is dropping as they are replaced by innovation. 

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Taylor said, “Any of our customers with a smartphone can pay from their car using our BPMe app, at all of our company-owned, and the majority of our independently owned and operated sites across the country.”

That change will have more of an impact on workforces in smaller towns.

In 2013, census data showed service station attendants were a bigger portion of the rural workforce than in major cities. 

On the West Coast those working on the forecourts of stations were three of every 1000 people employed. Tasman, Southland, and Northland were the next highest with about two of every 1000 employees employed at petrol forecourts. 

Meanwhile the job made the smallest dent in Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury markets making up about one, or in Auckland’s case, 0.5 of every 1000 jobs. 

Since 2012, the amount of petrol sold by Z Energy rose over a million litres corresponding to $100m increase in profits and a $1.77 net increase in profit per litre. 

Yet for “middle of nowhere” gas stations these profits are felt more seasonally. 

Awakino service station on State Highway 3 in Awakino outside North Taranaki is the sole fuel stop for those driving the 110km stretch between Urenui and Piopio. 

Former owner William Tawhara recently sold  the business back to the fuel suppliers Waitomo Petroleum who have leased the space to Awakino Holdings. 

Tawhara said the business slowed down a lot in the winter. He estimated the profit margin went from 15 per cent to 4 per cent. 

“It gets really quiet around here, but people still need it.” 

The switch in ownership has seen the station’s four attendants let go and self-service pumps installed so the station could be available to drivers 24 hours a day. 

“I think they [the service attendants] saw it coming, it’s happened to a lot of the rural stations around here … there’s only a few that still have service attendants and those are more mechanic-focused businesses.”

Selling a site or upgrading it rather than decommissioning it was attractive to owners who then did not have to deal with the high cost of removing the fuel tank. 

The cost of doing this was “somewhere in the region of $100,000-$200,000” and typically took about two months, according to Z Energy. 

The company pays for the removal rather than the owner of their forecourt retail businesses.

The high cost also means businesses are careful to put them in spots they’ll stay.

For the remote Tararua township of Pongaroa, getting a petrol station would have been impossible without community funding. 

A partnership between Tararua District Council and Allied Petroleum saw the two entities split the cost of a $555,134 fuel station on donated land. 

Allied Petroleum national sales manager Ray Marsh admitted small community projects weren’t easy to make commercially viable. 

from Ellie NZ Rss http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/98699323/Chart-The-shrinking-jobs-of-service-station-attendants

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https://ellieplume83.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/chart-the-shrinking-jobs-of-service-station-attendants/