The forecourt
A retail fuel site is a piece of process plant with a shop attached. This page describes what is actually on it and why.
Dispensers
A dispenser draws fuel from the tank, measures it, and delivers it through a hose and nozzle. The measurement is the commercially critical part: pumps are legal-for-trade instruments, verified and sealed, and periodically re-verified. A dispenser that over-delivers loses money on every sale and one that under-delivers is short-measuring the customer, which is an offence.
Nozzles and interlocks
Nozzles carry an automatic shut-off that trips when fuel reaches the filler neck. Larger-diameter nozzles for commercial diesel will not enter a passenger car’s petrol filler, which is a deliberate physical safeguard against misfuelling: one of the more expensive mistakes a motorist can make.
Vapour recovery
Petrol gives off vapour, and that vapour is both a pollutant and a hazard. Stage 1 recovery captures vapour displaced from the tank when a delivery is made and returns it to the tanker. Stage 2 captures vapour displaced from the vehicle tank during filling and returns it underground. Both are required on sites above the relevant throughput thresholds, and both are tested.
Safety systems
Emergency stop buttons that isolate every pump at once, fire-fighting equipment at defined positions, spill kit, drainage through an interceptor so that fuel cannot reach the surface water system, and zoning that dictates what electrical equipment may be installed and where. All of it is subject to the petroleum storage regime and to inspection.
Deliveries
A tanker delivery is the highest-risk routine operation on a forecourt. It follows a set procedure: the tanker positioned and chocked, the correct compartment matched to the correct tank fill point, bonding connected, vapour recovery coupled, the area supervised, and the tank dipped before and after. Cross-filling a tank, putting petrol into a diesel tank or the reverse, contaminates the whole tank and every vehicle served from it afterwards.
Payment and pricing
Fuel is a low-margin, high-turnover retail product with a price displayed on a pole sign to the whole passing road. Pricing is public, immediate and compared constantly, which makes the trade unusually transparent and unusually sensitive to a competitor a few hundred metres away.
Regulation
A retail fuel site sits under petroleum storage certification, weights and measures law for the dispensers, environmental permitting for vapour and for drainage, and the general fire and workplace safety regime. None of it is optional and all of it is inspected.