Pump checkups

Dale Kunze is pumping gasoline into a federally certified-to-be-exact, five-gallon steel can with precise measurement marks in its thin neck. The state inspector is checking whether the pump is cheating or is accurate.

"It's right on," he says after pumping five gallons as fast as possible at a downtown Salt Lake City station. He repeats the test, pumping gas as slowly as possible.

"It's 1 cubic inch low this time," or about 1 tablespoon, he says. That is still well within the legally allowed 6 cubic-inch margin of error, plus or minus — about 7 tablespoons per five gallons (or about 1 cent per gallon at today's prices). "Almost always, it seems like you get a little less if you pump slower."

Data from state inspectors like Kunze reveal an interesting statistic in a time when Utah has among the highest gas prices nationally: Utah motorists have a 1-in-25 chance of buying gasoline from a pump that fails to give amounts within legal ranges.

The good news: Half of the pumps failed by the state actually give consumers too much. But half give them too little. So motorists have about a 1-in-50 chance of getting more than they paid for, and 1-in-50 odds of getting less.

"Given the price of gasoline today, that (pump errors) could amount to billions of dollars across the nation in a year," Kunze says. "That's why it's important to have a neutral third party inspect pumps to ensure that equity may prevail, and that both the consumer and the business are protected."

Data from state records of pump inspections in 2005 and through August in 2006 (obtained by the Deseret Morning News through a state open records law request) reveal many interesting findings, including:

• Of the 44,796 pump inspections conducted in 2005 and 2006, 1,898 failures were cited. That is a failure rate of 4.2 percent. Computerized state records do not record how many gave too much gasoline and how many gave too little. But the eight state inspectors estimate as a group that roughly half give too much and half give too little.

• Failures were scattered among 92 gas stations in 43 communities. Since the state has 1,140 gas stations, that means about 8 percent of them had at least one pump that failed an inspection in 2005 or 2006. (See a complete list of all stations at the chart on the right.)

Deseret Morning News graphicFailed gas pumpsRequires Adobe Acrobat.