Two customers of the Eagle Express gas station at 28th Avenue and Olive Street have reported problems with their vehicles soon after buying fuel from the station Tuesday night.
The doors to the empty station were padlocked Friday afternoon and the gas pump nozzles had plastic bags placed over them.
Marquies Carter bought $20 worth of fuel from the station at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday for his 2012 Chevrolet Malibu.
“I drove it home and the next morning I started the car and it started jerking and cut off,” Carter said Friday in the Eagle Express parking lot. “I was trying to get it to Smart where I bought it and it would not accelerate. The technician took a fuel sample and found it was 90 percent water and 10 percent gas. They estimated it will cost $1,000 to repair and it is not covered under the warranty.”
Carter called the Pine Bluff Police Department to send an officer to take a report and Patrolman Ed Johnson responded.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“He did the right thing as a consumer,” Johnson said. “He’s got a fuel sample and that will help him with his case.”
Dana Gateley said she stopped at the Eagle Express at 10:50 p.m. Tuesday on the way home from work at an area restaurant.
“I don’t normally purchase gas there but it was late and I needed some,” Gateley said. “It was late and I decided to stop there. I am a customer of that business. I buy other things there but I normally don’t buy gas. They have always been lovely people there.”
Gateley said she decided to fill up the tank of her 2006 Nissan Sentra and then headed back onto Olive Street.
“I coasted through the light at Walmart,” Gateley said. “I made it almost to 73rd on Highway 63 when it stopped running. I had to call my husband to come get me.”
Gateley said the car was towed to Bobby’s Repair in White Hall, where it was repaired for $351.77.
“They had to take the gas tank off of the car,” Gateley said. “Then they had to go through the whole fuel system to clean it out. They took a fuel sample and it came to 50 percent water. So I bought 12 gallons of gas and ended up with 6 gallons of fuel and 6 gallons of water.”
Gateley said her husband went to the Eagle Express on Thursday evening with the receipts for the repairs and towing plus a copy of her bank statement with the record of the fuel purchase and the fuel sample.
“He told them that it was a problem and said that they would need to pay for this,” Gateley said. “They told him that the owner is in the hospital and could not be reached by phone. My husband stayed outside for 20 minutes and warned people that stopped for gas not to buy any. The store manager called the police. The police came and politely asked my husband to leave and he did.
“We had planned to stage a protest in the parking lot adjacent to the station this morning but they have had the station closed since last night,” Gateley said.
Wilford Jones, petroleum products chemist supervisor at the Arkansas Bureau of Standards, said it appeared that the manager at the gas station was unprepared for the situation that developed.
“What I’ve heard is that the manager that was there is fairly new and didn’t know what to do,” Jones said. “He panicked. The owner wasn’t in the hospital. He is out of the country. We are working with find out who the owner is so that we can contact him.”
Jones said that he was dispatching a Bureau chemist Friday afternoon to take a sample of the fuel in the tanks at the Eagle Express station.
A call placed to the number listed for the Eagle Express Friday evening was answered by a man who said the owner was not there and who hung up the phone when he was asked for the owner’s expected return date.