COEUR d'ALENE - At Fairway Grocery & Gas, employees have been pumping gas for special customers for years.

Starting Monday, all customers will be special customers.

Owners Gary and Joan Tolerico confirmed Friday that every weekday through the winter, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., employees will happily clean drivers' windshields and pump their gas. It's part of a local movement to offer full service at local filling stations.

"We've been doing it for some of our customers all along," said Gary Tolerico, who has owned Fairway since 2002. "We always try to go above and beyond. That's the only thing we have to sell, is service. That's what will bring customers in and keep them coming back."

Tolerico said this time of year, he sells between 2,500 and 3,000 gallons of Conoco gas daily. As of Friday, he said, Fairway was making about 2 cents profit per gallon - and it would be less, he said, if his supplier wasn't helping.

Tolerico painted a picture of exceedingly strong competition for those scant margins. While it's a windfall for drivers, the independents who sell gasoline in Coeur d'Alene battle a discount monster and, to a lesser degree, businesspeople who own multiple stations.

"Ever since Costco opened, it's been a tough market in Coeur d'Alene," Tolerico said, attributing much higher gas prices in Post Falls largely to that city's distance from Costco.

Since greater customer service equals more business, Tolerico's all for it.

Fairway Grocery & Gas joins the Chevron station on the northeast corner of Honeysuckle and U.S. 95 as the only places offering full service in this area. However, there's room for more. If you own a service station and will offer customers full service this winter, please call 664-0227.

FULL SERVICE STATIONS

* Hayden Chevron, U.S. 95 and Honeysuckle Avenue, Mon.-Sat. 8 a.m. to noon. Phone: 651-9959

* Fairway Grocery & Gas, 1735 W. Kathleen Ave. in Coeur d'Alene (just west of Ramsey), Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Phone: 665-1445

How did this full-service thing get started?

On Sept. 15, The Press published the following letter to the editor from 89-year-old Marion Walker:

Hopefully you will print this plea for a real live attendant to pump gas for senior drivers during this forthcoming winter.

We appreciate all the kindnesses our community affords us, but what we desperately need is at least one gas station that will provide this service.

It's no fun when one has reached the 70s and 80s, and still be alert and very capable of driving, to have to be exposed to the winter elements of ice and single-degree weather, walk on ice into the store to pay in advance, then walk back to the car, then pump one's own gas, etc.

Can't we take Oregon's example and have even one station, one day a week, that can provide this much-needed service?

Somebody - hear me, please!

MARION WALKER

Hayden