Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
They’re scattered everywhere. In the shop, the back of the truck, against the fence, and next to the well house, just about anywhere they could be used. The iconic image of the stranded motorist, the ubiquitous gas can, is now a nearly useless device thanks to the “Nanny State” that once was America. The cans are there, but the spouts on most of them have been tossed into the garbage.
Yes, it’s just a small tool, used to fill lawnmowers, chainsaws, and stranded, out-of-gas vehicles, but its demise is our society in microcosm.
I have a sturdy, steel five-gallon can inherited from my late father-in-law. Old Pete, as his friends called Sigmund Hahn, bought the Craftsman (yes, Craftsman, as in made by Sears) sometime back in the 1960’s.
The round red can with the small and large screw-on caps is a study in simplicity. Unscrew the large cap, fill it with gasoline from the pump, put it in the back of your truck, and it’s safe to travel across the roughest terrain without spilling a drop. When it’s time to fill something, you just unscrew the smaller cap that sits atop a short stem, and you can pour fuel with no mishaps. You don’t smell like gas after using it either.
Enter the Environmental Protection Agency, acting on a lead from the People’s Republic of California. Yes, those do-gooders in the Golden State were concerned that fuel spilled from traditional gas cans was polluting the environment. Not just spills from the can as it was being used, but fumes escaping from the vent hole, leaking gas and diesel vapor into the pristine air breathed by the beautiful people.
In 2009 they EPA banned normal gas cans, you know the ones Goober and Gomer used at Wally’s Service Station in Mayberry, the ones we used as kids to fill lawnmowers and go karts, yes, the All-American gas can.
In studying World War II, there were many incredibly arduous jobs done by Allied and enemy soldiers, sailors, and airmen across the globe. A monotonous, mind-numbing, and arduous task was told to me by the late Bob Seiwert, an Army Air Force veteran. I used to buy coins from Bob at his shop on Main Street in Riverton.
Bob was stationed in Northern India at a B-29 base. In Operation Matterhorn, the Army Air Force tried flying over the Himalayas to bomb Japanese targets in China a few times during the war. The problem was fueling these giant Boeing bombers. There were no pumps available capable of reaching the wing tanks of the Superfortress. There was an oversupply of strong, young men.
The B-29 is a big bird, not quite a B-52 but a monster nonetheless. The plane has seven fuel tanks, but usually only requires the two inboard and two outboard tanks on most missions. Flying over the highest mountains on the planet required all the fuel they could pack into the plane, so the guys lined up and started passing five-gallon Jerry cans filled with high-octane aviation fuel.
Each inboard tank holds 1436 gallons of fuel, the outboard 1367 gallons. There are four bomb bay tanks, each holding 640 gallons, and a center section tank holding 1315 gallons. Add all those tanks up, and you have a total fuel capacity of 9,479 gallons of aviation gasoline.
Now imagine pouring fuel into that cavernous space five gallons at a time. Bob said it took a while to empty almost 2,000 metal fuel cans into the plane. Multiply that by 24, and you have a squadron ready to fly the “hump.”
The Jerry can remains a marvel of efficiency. It would never pass muster with the safety-conscious, litigation-fearing bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. today, but it was the workhorse of the 20th century for anyone in agriculture, industry, or in any field that required extra fuel to be packed on a trip.
The curved rectangular design, with a built-in set of handles and a spout that stored inside the can, that could be reversed, locked back into place, and poured with ease rode the bumper of many a jeep, haul truck, or skidder.
But, no more. The collective geniuses at the EPA, with the help of our friends on the sunny west coast, have replaced it with perhaps the most insidious implement ever designed, the safety spout.
These spring-loaded, Rube Goldberg-style devices require three hands to operate successfully. More fuel has been spilled in a single year after their implementation than in the entire century previously with traditional cans.
The “spill-proof” cap effectively prevents you from dispensing any fuel.
In frustration, people cut off the tip of the spout, remove the spring, or just take the spout off and pour wildly. They removed the vent hole too, dangerous vapors you know, so the fuel glug, glug, glugs, sucks in the sides of the plastic container and spills out of control all over your shoes, clothes, and the ground.
I watched my son Brian tune up a new six-gallon plastic fuel jug on Saturday. He snapped the safety catch off the spout, then worked the spring until it was loose enough to pour a mix of 50-1 into the 75-horsepower outboard on his boat.
I have just one original pre-2009 spout left, but a dozen or so plastic cans I’ve picked up at auctions. They give these away, always without a spout, since the modern spout is useless. The threads on the heavily used old spout are starting to wear away, and it doesn’t seal tightly on all those cans.
I often use funnels, large and small, to replace the safe, time-tested old-style spout.
You can buy an aftermarket spout, a spout that sells for more than the can itself. The spring is gone, but the spout is so narrow that fuel only drips out of it unless you make a few modifications with a saw, and drilling a vent hole is required too.
When I filled the tractor with diesel, it’s with an open five-gallon jug while standing on a tire so I could hit the eight-inch-wide funnel without spilling. As a kid, I just tipped the spout of the metal gas can into the hole on the fuel tank, stepped down, waited a minute or so, and hoisted another can into place. No more.
A gas can is a small thing, but it’s necessary now that spring has arrived and the gas-powered mowers, chainsaws, 4x4s, and diesel tractors, loaders, and swathers are about to get to work. Why do they have to make it so hard? In the end, you spill five times as much with the new “safety” spouts as you did with the old style.
Protecting us from ourselves, just another example of your government at work.