Ali Ezzeddine used to have one person steal his gasoline every three or four months.

Now it’s three or four a week.

“Since the gas has gone over $2 a gallon, we’ve had at least $150 of drive-offs every week,” said Ezzeddine, owner of EZ-Al’s Food Mart, 955 E. 23rd St. “We cannot afford to lose that much in gas. We already just break even, without the drive-offs. We can’t have this anymore.”

With gasoline costs expected to stay above $2 a gallon through the summer, Ezzeddine and other station managers and owners in Lawrence are doing something about the problem.

EZ-Al’s is joining several other stations in town that are requiring their customers to prepay for their gasoline. It’s a move designed to prevent drive-off gasoline thefts, a problem that costs U.S. convenience stores $112 million a year, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Cody Lindenberger, store manager at Fuel Stop, 2200 Harper St., shifted all eight of his Conoco pumps over to prepayments a month ago.

Because the pumps don’t turn on until payment is confirmed — either with a credit or ATM/debit card at the pump or cash, check or credit inside — the thefts problem has evaporated.

“Every other station will be doing it,” Lindenberger said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Wood Oil’s station at 902 N. Second St. in North Lawrence already requires prepayments on three of its four pumps; only the one closest to the cashier’s window remains free of such restrictions. Two stations just west of downtown on Ninth Street also have prepayment rules: Presto Convenience Store requires prepayments on its pump closest to the street, and Jayhawk Food Mart requires prepayments after dark.

Ali Ezzeddine, who owns EZ-Al's Food Mart at 23rd Street and Haskell Avenue, is among station owners who require people to prepay before filling up with gasoline. Currently Ezzeddine only requires this at night, but at the end of the month he is switching to all-day prepay. The increase in people driving off without paying prompted the new rules, posted on the pumps in photo at top.

But even as prospects for drive-off thefts remain high, other station owners aren’t buying into the prepayment approach.

The risk of alienating convenience-minded customers is too high to justify such rules, said Scott Zaremba, president of Zarco 66 Inc., which has four stations in Lawrence and two in Olathe. At least for now.

“Maybe we could get a statewide deal where you have to prepay,” said Zaremba, who reports losing thousands of dollars a year on drive-offs. “There’s no way you can do it alone. You don’t want to make your customers unhappy.

“But it’s just like anything else: When it gets to a point when you can no longer afford to do it, you have to make a change.”

6News video: High thefts forcing customers to prepay for gas (04-22-05)

Zaremba can take some comfort in the sentiments of Jason Berry, a Eudora resident who stopped in Lawrence with a friend to fill up their Jeep and fishing boat Friday afternoon on the way to Clinton Lake.

Pumping gas already takes too long, Berry said. Having to pay first just keeps him from buying a hot dog or anything else inside, because going into the store a second time is an even bigger waste.

“They’re losing sales,” said Berry, a commercial framer who works in Olathe, Overland Park and other area communities, where he avoids prepayment stations. “It’s a hassle.”

Roger Flores, a cashier at the BP Amoco station at 619 Iowa, said that he wouldn’t mind sacrificing a few sales for the security of prepayments. But the owner of his station won’t go for it.

“There’s just so many strategies now for people driving off,” he said, noting that people remove their license plates, cover them with bags or simply park at angles to obscure the cashier’s view of plate numbers. “And I get blamed for it.”

Ezzeddine plans to switch his Conoco station on 23rd Street over to “all-day prepay” next month, once he’s equipped his pumps for card payments. He hopes to increase business by allowing people to buy gasoline after hours — the store is open from 5 a.m. to midnight — while cutting back on drive-offs.

“Well, $150 (a week) isn’t going to close a business, but for the long run it makes a difference,” he said. “If you don’t stop it at $150, it’s going to be $300. It won’t stop. And you can’t have that.”