Agency assures there’s justice in your scales

Saturday, Feb. 7, 1998 | 4:58 a.m.

It never ceases to amaze Nevada Weights and Measures officials that people trust flawed car gasoline gauges and supermarket courtesy scales far more than the finely tuned devices the agency inspects annually.

"Our biggest single complaint comes from consumers who insist that their cars hold something like 14 gallons of gasoline, yet the pump says they took in 15 gallons," said Kevin Coyne, senior inspector of the Weights and Measures Section for the past eight years.

"They say they are getting ripped off, especially if they have a car computer that tells them they need just 14 gallons of gasoline. Most of the time they simply overfill their tanks into the expansion area at the top (which is designed to prevent spillage). Also, the (car) computers are often wrong."

Coyne says the scales in grocery store produce sections are designed only to give consumers a ballpark figure of what they will be spending.

"We do not test those scales because they do not determine the actual cost," said Coyne, who was a field inspector for 10 years before becoming head of the agency. "We inspect the scales at the counter and the ones in the meat department because they determine the prices."

And, with the area's booming growth in both businesses and population, the state agency that falls under the Nevada Department of Business and Industry's Agriculture Division has had to hustle each year to make sure the ever-growing number of commercial scales are accurate.

In just four years, the number of devices that have to be inspected have climbed by nearly 3,700 -- 3,000 of which were new service station fuel pumps.

During that same period, five inspectors shared that burgeoning workload. Just recently, a sixth inspector was added to shoulder the burden of inspecting more than 12,500 devices each year.

Service station pumps outnumber all other commercial measuring devices by more than 2-to-1. Other types of devices that are inspected include scales that weigh deli food, livestock, concrete, and freight.

In addition to the ever-growing number of annual inspections, the agency also responds to hundreds of consumer complaints alleging that commercial scales are off -- and always in favor of the store.

Sometimes, Coyne says, consumers are right that gasoline pumps and scales are in need of recalibration.

Last year, they discovered that 18.4 percent of gasoline pumps in Southern Nevada were not up to tolerance standards. They also discovered that 11.2 percent of all other scales did not meet acceptable tolerance levels.

In some cases, Coyne said, the devices were off in favor of the consumer, causing the business to lose money.

"We find it both ways," Coyne said. "We judge these things down the middle to make sure both the consumer and business are getting a fair deal."

And those statistics include a lot of minor infractions that make the failure rate appear more serious than it is. In actuality, Coyne said, less than 1 percent of gas pumps have to be shut down because of serious malfunctions.

Although scales that measure different things have to meet different standards, the general rule of thumb is that, to pass an inspection, a measuring device must be within two-tenths of 1 percent of being accurate, Coyne said.

For gasoline pumps to be approved they must be within 3 cubic inches of accuracy per five gallons on an initial inspection. For subsequent annual inspections they must be within 6 cubic inches of accuracy per five gallons. There are 231 cubic inches in a gallon.

Each pump is tested twice -- 1,155 cubic inches per test -- to assure that proper measurements are taken.

Ten years ago, Weights and Measures began testing octane levels of fuel and discovered a serious problem existed.

"A sampling of stations back then found a 19 percent failure rate," Coyne said. "This meant that consumers were not getting the octane rate that was being advertised on the pumps.

"Over the years, we have addressed this problem through testing of samples from stations. In our most recent sampling, we found no violations."

The large penalties for cheating consumers on octane levels also serve as a deterrent to service station operators: $2,000 for the first offense, $3,500 for the second violation and $5,000 for the third and each additional offense.

Still, gasoline dealers say they do not fear visits by the Weights and Measures inspectors.

"It is not a cause for alarm if you are not doing anything wrong," said Jack Greco, longtime president of the Nevada Gasoline Retailers Association. "The inspections are useful to us because they help keep our pumps calibrated."

Greco, who owns a Las Vegas gasoline station, noted that during one inspection it was discovered that a minor malfunction had caused one of his pumps to be giving out far too much gasoline.

Greco said that he too finds it interesting that folks will swear up and down that their car gas gauges are more accurate than his far more expensive pumps.

"A car gasoline gauge is comparable to a floater in a toilet," Greco said. "People will complain that our pumps are off because their gauge, which is inside a car that is not on level ground, reads a certain way. We simply tell them to call Weights and Measures and have them come out and check our pump."

The agency also inspects diesel pumps at truck stops and the huge devices that fuel airplanes at airports.

Coyne noted that Weights and Measures departments date back to the very beginnings of the United States.

"The first was created in 1778 by Congress to monitor the agricultural industry, which then represented most of our economy," Coyne said.

"Today, most weights and measures departments are under business and industry and have little to do with agriculture because farming now plays a far lesser role in our economy."

A lot of problems with scales have been eradicated over the years because of advances in technology. For instance, Coyne said, an unscrupulous butcher can no longer add to the cost of meat by sticking his thumb on a scale.

"It's all digital now, so the butcher could not keep his thumb still long enough (to register the bloated sales price)," Coyne said. "It's one of the many developments that makes it more difficult for someone to cheat."

While the Nevada agency does not inspect U.S. Postal Service scales, it does monitor the devices operated by United Parcel Service, Federal Express and commercial mail service centers.

The agency also inspects linear measures for items like rope and fabric.

During the SUN interview, Coyne was asked if Weights and Measures inspects scales used by veterinarians and animal clinics that charge consumers by the pound to spay and neuter dogs and cats or to euthanize them.

"If they are basing their price on weight, we will have to inspect those scales," Coyne said. "We'll have to check into that one."

In the 1980s, it was brought to the agency's attention that Las Vegas pawn shops and jewelry stores were selling gold and silver by weight. As a result, Nevada Weights and Measures became the first agency of its kind in the nation to regulate the scales used to sell coins and jewelry, Coyne said.

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