Remember pulling into a gas station and having an employee approach the car window, asking you how much gasoline you want, pumping the gas, washing the windows, checking the oil and then coming to your window to collect the money?
The days of full-service gas stations are largely past, and one Bonner Springs gas station that still provides full service will be closing on Saturday after 57 years.
Bill Stephan opened a full-service gas station in 1959 in Bonner Springs. On Saturday, March 26, Bill and his son Craig will say goodbye to customers from noon to 3 p.m.
Stephan’s Service, a BP station at 601 E. Front St., Bonner Springs, is one of the last remaining full-service stations in the area. The station had not just attendants who would pump gas, it also had a couple of bays where a car could be repaired.
Craig Stephan, Bill’s son, who has owned the business since 2002, said full-service stations were still going pretty strong in the 1970s and 1980s. Then convenience stores started hitting the market in the 1990s and the industry totally changed, he said. Some customers wanted to go to convenience stores where they could get a lot of items at the same time as they bought gas, he said.
“If you want to make money on gas, you have to have volume,” Stephan said. “Our volume over the years dropped from 1998, when it was 1.5 million gallons, to 360,000 last year.”
Until 2004 and 2005 the volume was about 1 million, he added. Then competition took some of the volume and it steadily declined with convenience stores and other gas stations opening.
Stephan grew up in Bonner Springs. His father and mother moved there from Texas in 1959 to start the business, he said.
“I’m the baby of eight kids,” he added. He was the only one who wanted to stay and take over the gas station. But being his own boss had its ups and downs, he said.
“There’s a lot of stress on you, you’re not just running a business, you’re running a business that provides for other families,” Stephan said. “There’s a sense of responsibility to help take care of them, too.”
The good part about it, he said, was “you didn’t have to take orders from somebody else.” But at the same time, “you’re still never mentally away from the place.”
Stephan said he always joked that if he was to ever win the lottery, he would turn the gas station into a retro 1950s or 1960s gas station, and run complete full service, giving people a glimpse of what it looked like in those days.
“It’s not feasible to run a business that way, but it would be fun to do if you had the money to have some fun with it,” he said. “We were always talking about something fun to do. But obviously, it’s not a reality.”
While he has too many memories to go into too much detail, he said he would never forget what the gas station was like on Sept. 11, 2001.
He was on crutches, recovering from a knee operation, when customers panicked, many rushing to buy fuel after terrorists attacked other cities.
Usually he would sell 3,400 gallons a day at that time, but on that day the gas station sold more than 9,000 gallons of fuel, he said.
“Crazy, crazy, crazy,” Stephan said. On a normal day there were two employees and a high school student to help run the pump.
“That day, we had two cashiers, a guy at each pump, two guys at each corner directing traffic, including myself,” he said. “Eight to nine guys working to control the rush of people panicking who thought they were not going to have the opportunity to buy fuel anymore.”
There were nonstop cars from mid-afternoon to 9 p.m. that day, he recalled.
But the memories he will really treasure are his friendships with customers, he said.
“Your customers become your personal friends,” Stephan said. He sees them every week and visits with them, and after some time, becomes friends.
Stephan will be joining the Kling Auto and Diesel Repair business at 16463 Linwood Road, Bonner Springs, on March 28, where he will be a mechanic, he said, and where customers are welcome to visit him.
