All the pump companies advertised their pumps as coming with a choice of having a nozzle with either a solid or a flex end. This was true if you were buying a box car full of pumps, but if you were buying just one pump from the local service station equipment dealer, you purchased the pump (it was in a crate with everything including either a solid or a flex nozzle) and it was delivered to your station. They opened the crate, installed the pump and you started selling gasoline using what ever nozzle was on the pump.
Nozzles only lasted six months or so, depending on the volume of gasoline you sold...so when the nozzle failed you needed to keep selling gasoline. You didn't call the local service repair company to come out and get your nozzle to rebuild it. You went to your shelf where you had one, two or three (depending your volume of sales) rebuilt nozzles. These were supplied by a rebuilder, he put them there on consignment, and you took one of them and put it on your pump and continued selling gasoline.
He came by about once a month, saw that you had used one of his nozzles, replaced it, and charged you for the one you had used.
The one you used could have been one that had Tokheim, or Wayne or whatever, or had been a generic nozzle like OPW, McDonald, Morrison or MVC on it, it didn't matter to you what was on the nozzle, you just wanted to keep pumping gasoline.
So, now we are restoring pumps. It is your decision on how authentic you want the pump to be. Do you want the nozzle to be the one that was on the pump when it came out of the crate, or are you ok with any nozzle from the era. Look at it this way, if you were restoring a 1950s Chevrolet car, would you put a Dodge owners manual in the glove box?
Jack Sim
