I was talking to our diesel mechanic at work today and he said stay away from the truck stops that go through large amounts of diesel quickly. He said they use a lower quality diesel and most of it is watered down. He told me to fill up at a station that sells a lot of diesel, but not as much as much as the busy truck stops. He also said I should stick with BP, speedway, or sunoco brands. I've had my first diesel for about a month so I need all of the advise I can get. <br>Thanks

 

I got some at a super high volume flying J in VA on Sunday that I only got 20.xx mpg from, used the whole tank on the highway.<br>Yesterday I filled up at a shell that does a pretty good bit of business and am at 23.4 so far(160+ miles), and it's not all highway.

 

when i'm running down the highway i usaully fill up at the flying j or the petro. I have never had a fuel problem when i buy from them. not sure how you would water diesel down. The large truck stops have a rep and it would damage their business if they sold crappy diesel.

 

I always use either BP or Sunoco. I don't know why but my truck seems to run better. I don't like Speedway fuel. The only time I ever had my water in fuel light come on was from Speedway fuel. Just my .02 though.

 

Well I've driven over 158,000 miles and used over 8500 gallons of fuel in the last 10 years - the majority purchased at high volume truck stops or stations. I have yet to find any water - fuel filter drained weekly and changed every 12,000 miles - or other contaminents. I've had &quot;Diesel mechanics&quot; tell me I should be using 30 wt oil. What the average Diesel mechanic knows about our trucks and their performance does not impress me. : :<br>Bob

 

Well I started adding up all the miles on the Diesels I've owned &amp; driven over the years and it came to just shy of 1,000,000 miles, whew were did I go! Can you tell I like Diesels Anyway in all those years I'll bet I never picked up more than a cup of water, guess I was lucky. I did get a case of the microbe's once, boy does that stuff stink . The only thing that really gave me trouble was silt and both times it came from a turnpike fuel station in the east. Its not fun changing fuel filters behind a motel &gt; <br>I will say when traveling I always go to the big truck stops, they move enough fuel to keep it somewhat clean &amp; I never felt that it was of a poor quality. Actually the best fuel I ever got was back in the '70's in Mexico, it had lots of oil in it and made lots of power The only bad thing was it smoked allot, if can call that bad

 

Watered down fuel @ high volume truck stops? : I have a hard time believing that..... They have way too much to lose pulling something like that!

 

Anybody caught watering down fuel would be put out of business by the State around here. Plus, water doesn't go into suspension in fuel very well anyway--it settles out to the bottom of the tank, where the pickup is. It's not like you can add 10% water to fuel and sell it as a mixture. If they put in enough water to get above the pickup, somebody would essentially get a load of water with little or no fuel in it. Not good for business.<br><br>Having said that, every station--no exceptions--has some water in their tanks. It is an unavoidable consequence of hauling fuel to the station and pumping it in and out of the tanks. As fuel is drawn from the tank, it is replaced with air. Air contains water vapor which condenses and gets in the fuel.<br><br>The good stations monitor this and keep the water in the tanks to a minimum. It's there, but as long as it's below the pickup, it's not a problem. This is one of the reasons why if you see a tanker pulling away from a station, you might want to wait about an hour before filling up there.

 

It may not necessarily be H2O that they're watering it down with. I've heard of bulk diesel fuel supplies being watered down with 10% kerosine to stretch the profit margin. <br><br>Nationwide, there is no requirement to post cetane numbers on diesel fuel pumps. It's hard to know the quality of fuel you're buying. I believe BP/Amoco has three grades of diesel fuel, the top being Premier, which has a minimum cetane of 50 according to the info the local station provided me with. That's what they sell. It's a smaller station and does not see near the volume of a truck stop. So it's possible that small turnover stations sell a better quality fuel compared to a high quanity truck stop.<br><br>Without posting minimum cetane, I'm sure it's easy to &quot;water&quot; fuel down, as what type of regulatory mechanism whould even bother to check?

 

Any high volume truck stop monitors the fuel and any water in the tanks...they take regular fuel samples and send them in for testing of algae-water-and other microbe's if the fuel sample has problems then they must treat the tanks to get rid of it<br><br>When they order a load of fuel (or gas) its called into the oil company....and if they said please add 10% water to the load Iam sure they would never get that load of fuel...most city's only have a few tank farms that everyone gets their fuel from and each time an order is needed they price shop between which one is lowest that day on price<br><br>Most large truck stops will get 2 or more loads of fuel each day...one of my old customers supplied fuel to a large truck stop on I75 in southern Georgia and he had one tanker that only deliver to that truck stop 3 loads every day<br><br>I prefer to get fuel from high volume truck stops rather then a ma &amp; pa station with low fuel turn over because if fuel sit in a 1/2 empty tank condensation forms and thats where the water in the fuel comes from :-[<br><br>Name brands of fuel sometimes do give better MPG...Shell does have good fuel but you pay extra for it also over the common truck stop brands...is it worth .10 more per gal to gain 1-2 MPG I guess thats your decision

 

Thanks for the repies. As I said, this is all new to me so I learn something new everyday. I've put about 5000 miles on my truck since I got it a month ago. I've only used fuel from two stations and they both sell large quantities of fuel daily and I have had NO problems at all. I might let my tank run low untill the light comes on and then try a few tanks of some name brand feul and see if theres a difference. <br>But why try to fix something if it ain't broke??<br>Thanks

 

[quote author=pappyman link=board=8;threadid=10303;start=0#98697 date=1044001003]<br><br>Shell does have good fuel but you pay extra for it also over the common truck stop brands...is it worth .10 more per gal to gain 1-2 MPG I guess thats your decision<br>[/quote]<br><br><br>Around here it's the same price for the Shell, flying J, petro, etc.<br>If you can get 10% better mileage from a fuel and it's only a dime more pre gallon, sounds like a wise investment to me ;D

 

Around here everyone is usually within .10 cents of each other as well.

I have tried Phillips, Chevron and Sinclair, the big 3 in these parts.

Phillips and Chevron seem to be the best of the three.

With Sinclair, it seemed like I had less power, fuel mileage went down.
Even though the Sinclair is always the cheapest, I'll pay the extra .05 for the quality Phillips.
The Phillips usually cheaper than the Chevron due to it's proximity to the Sinclair station even though the three are all within 2 blocks of each other.

Even on the road, I'll stick with the Phillips and Chevrons.

Haven't used a truck stop yet, but if prices don't settle down, I guess I'll have to, they're usually another .05 cheaper.


phox

 

[quote author=Ruralmedic link=board=8;threadid=10303;start=0#98692 date=1043998435]
It may not necessarily be H2O that they're watering it down with. I've heard of bulk diesel fuel supplies being watered down with 10% kerosine to stretch the profit margin.


[/quote]

'Watering down with kerosene&quot;, aka #1 fuel oil, is what is known as winterizing fuel. The ratio gets as high as 50% sometimes. #1 costs more than #2 (so does kerosene), so this wouldn't increase profit.

Kerosene and #1 are virtually the same fuel, but kerosene is very hard to find in a loading rack. Of the five racks in Kansas City, none had kerosene when I hauled fuel. All had #1 fuel oil, and that is what we cut #2 with to make winterized fuel. The closest fuel to kerosene was Jet-A which is more expensive yet. To get a product sold as 'kerosene', we had to go to Coffeyville Kansas which is 130 miles away.

But as far as watering down with things other than water, you are correct. Amoco caught one of it's station owners dumping used motor oil in the diesel tank. They were shut down the next day.

 

Every station that sells fuel/gas trys to provide the best product at the best price this is what makes that business grow...and theres allot involved with owning a station from equipment up keep to monitoring the fuels and in ground tanks....screwing around with the product will get you in trouble fast :P