No Gas, But Can Still Get Diesel

retmil46 · **Posted:** Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:34 pm

I haven't seen a situation like this first-hand since '73 - nearly all the local stations out of gas, and those that do have some severely limiting how much you can buy.

Apparently, even though the refineries and oil platforms weren't that badly hit, they're still having problems with the power grid - and that's playing hob with getting fuel flowing up the east coast pipelines again.

But it seems if you can find a station that also sells diesel, some distance away from the interstate and configured such that semis can't easily make use of them, odds are they'll still have diesel available for sale - particularly if they were one of the higher priced D2 stations before this mess hit.

Last night I finally got down to 1/4 tank on the MB after 2 weeks, and decided that I'd best try to get at least a few gallons for 2 more days work and the trip to the airport Saturday.

On the way home from work, I first tried a Wilco Hess truck stop at Exit 42 on I-77. No dice, they were completely out of everything. On the truck side of the stop, easily 3/4 of the pumps had semis parked beside them - drivers didn't have enough fuel to go any farther, and were parked by the pumps until a D2 tanker could show up.

After that, I tried a Shell station halfway on my drive to work, which I normally avoid due to their outrageous prices (usually 10 to 20 cents higher than any other station in the area). They did have RUG and D2 available, but had the card slots turned off and a sign demanding that you pay inside the store prior to pumping, and at 1:15 AM this so-called 24/7 "convenience" store was locked up tight.

My last try was a Citgo station 3 miles from home, that used to be my regular fueling station until they had problems with crappy fuel last year. Gas nozzles were bagged over, but the D2 nozzles were still open. They'd installed new pumps and filters from what I could see, and it was priced at 3.94/gallon. Pay at the pump slot worked, and had good flow and pressure from the nozzle - apparently they'd gotten the idea and cleaned up their act so to speak (ie, flushed out their bloody storage tanks).

Didn't have a cutoff limit either, let me get 12.6 gallons for $50.01, completely topping off the MB. 12.6 gallons for 2 weeks and 435 miles, not too shabby for the old beast. With an already full tank in the CRD as well, I'm good to go for 4 to 5 weeks if need be until they get this mess sorted out.

dgeist · **Posted:** Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:47 pm

I filled up just before the pipelines shut down and don't have that much travel, so today's the first day I've filled up since then. The BP just off the interstate (and about 1/4 mile from my house) had been out of unleaded all week and just started pumping again yesterday. I pulled up the pump with a diesel hose and there's a little sign "gas purchases limited to $25. Cash only". I figured, "Okay, no big deal. There's an ATM inside the building." So, I park, wait behind a few folks in line inside and then politely ask, "Is there a purchase limit on diesel?". "Nope, you can buy as much as you want." comes the response. I hear groans behind me and feel like a lucky guy. I go back out and start the pump. It indicates that I have to wait...for something. I head back in, wait in line again, and ask, "Do you need to turn the pump on or something?" "No, sir, you just have to pay first if it's cash." That would have been useful information 5 minutes ago. Then it comes, "..or with diesel, you can just pay at the pump."

Wow. The groans that time were much less envious and much more angry. I went out, lifted up the handwritten sign and slid my credit card. Sure enough, I pumped about $65 worth and went on my merry way. Also, for the first time in a year or so, ULSD was the same price as regular unleaded.

Interesting times.

Dan

mrkake · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:16 am

My son lives in Duluth and works in Alpharetta. He has been having a heck of a time getting to and from work with the gas situation (he drives a gasser). I told him the same thing. Try to find an out of the way place that's off the beaten path. He found one but they were limiting sales to 10 gallons or less. He will just have to stop more often until the aftermath of the storm dies down I guess.

Sir Sam · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:40 am

No problems here. But lucky for me I live an hour from 1 major refineries that refine locally produced oil.

Nice to be landlocked for once.

scrambledKJ · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:43 am

You can tell when a station get a new load of gas here, cause there is a traffic jam instantly. In NW atlanta, there is about 1 in 10 stations with gas. The governor assures us hat there is no shortage. His limo driver must have a secret stash. I found D2 at the racetrac for 4.03 the other night. No gas available. It was just me and a guy with 24's on his car. he was pumping up a leaky airshock and looking at me like I was wierd.

cerich · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:09 am

Macon has some shortages but it hasn't been hard to find RUG.

Diesel...not an issue

In fact until yesterday it was the same or 2cents less than RUG.

retmil46 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:26 am

I'm almost feeling sorry for those that panic-sold diesels with good fuel economy (even some TDI owners from what I saw on tdiclub) for a hybrid, during the run up in fuel prices over the past year or so.

Now they're not only stuck with car payments in addition to paying for fuel, a finite service life on their battery pack, but now can't find any fuel while their former diesel brethren are having little or no problem getting along.

Makes me feel a little smug as well, having taken the "this too shall pass" attitude during the peak in oil prices and sticking with diesel.

cerich · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:40 am

you must be living in the future, we haven't seen peak anything yet when it comes to fuel prices... :shock:

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:10 pm

cerich wrote:

you must be living in the future, we haven't seen peak anything yet when it comes to fuel prices... :shock:

X2

I almost have my personal refinery finished and soon will not have to purchase any diesel, Methanol for Bio or anything

Silverdiesel · **Posted:** Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:38 pm

With the CRD and a Jetta TDI its always easy for me to brag about diesel "around the water cooler"
And the first response is now " isn't diesel much more expensive then RUG?"
It used to be "noisy or smelley or smokey or slow" as a first comeback by a gasser owner.
Now here the spread is less than 5% over RUG lately.
Retmil is right - just stick with diesel and all good things will come around your way and one is "right" to stick to a fuel that is "conserving oil by using oil" and promotes "no nickel mining polution".

mrkake · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:29 am

Quote:

I almost have my personal refinery finished and soon will not have to purchase any diesel, Methanol for Bio or anything

what will you use in place of meth?

Sir Sam · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:14 am

mrkake wrote:

Quote:

I almost have my personal refinery finished and soon will not have to purchase any diesel, Methanol for Bio or anything

what will you use in place of meth?

crack

retmil46 · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:39 am

Sir Sam wrote:

mrkake wrote:

Quote:

I almost have my personal refinery finished and soon will not have to purchase any diesel, Methanol for Bio or anything

what will you use in place of meth?

crack

retmil46 · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:23 am

cerich wrote:

you must be living in the future, we haven't seen peak anything yet when it comes to fuel prices... :shock:

In the long run, probably - especially if some people like the idiot on a Discovery channel show has his way, saying we should gladly pay a $2/gallon tax on fuel to fund some of their CO2 reduction ideas.

I was primarily talking about people who showed a complete lack of any financial sense - who couldn't do the math to figure out that, even when the price differential between D2 and RUG was at it's worst recently, they were better off keeping a 40 mpg TDI that was paid for (and could run on a variety of fuels if need be), instead of trading for a Prius hybrid which in some cases would actually get worse overall fuel economy and having a $500/month car payment to boot (and runs only on gas).

For that matter, sounds a lot like the people currently running our financial system and banks. :evil:

Goglio704 · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:50 am

Many stations near me were out of gas before Texas got hit. Local TV created a bit of a panic and stations sold out. The price of gas jumped as much as $1.00. Diesel either stayed the same or went up .10. This week many stations are out of diesel. Don't know if this includes any truck stops locally.

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:55 pm

mrkake wrote:

Quote:

I almost have my personal refinery finished and soon will not have to purchase any diesel, Methanol for Bio or anything

what will you use in place of meth?

I've built a small test unit to refine WMO into actual diesel. The 30 gallon Tester works like a charm. I can produce a seemingly high quality diesel fuel which smells like the old high sulfur diesel used to. Viscosity is the same as D2 and it has a "slipperier" feeling to it. It remains fully liquid in the deep freeze, runs quieter and definitely has more "kick in the pants" than ULSD. The only strange thing about it is that it has some weird thermochromic properties. When it comes out of the outlet into the catch barrel @ 300-500 degrees, it is perfectly clear like pump diesel, but as it cools it suddenly changes to pitch black, like ink. It can be any color that it wants to be as long as it don't cost a cent and doesn't harm my fuel system. My next step is a 250 gallon unit.

geordi · **Posted:** Sun Sep 28, 2008 1:00 am

If you are feeling generous, I'd LOVE to know what your process is. That sounds insanely cool.

dgeist · **Posted:** Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:23 am

So, if you're rendering biodiesel from bio-oils, you must be doing something with the sugars. If not the lye+ethanol/methanol for a catalyst, are you using something along the lines of the McGyAn process and zircon?

Dan

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:34 am

dgeist wrote:

So, if you're rendering biodiesel from bio-oils, you must be doing something with the sugars. If not the lye+ethanol/methanol for a catalyst, are you using something along the lines of the McGyAn process and zircon?

Dan

Did you read my post? I'm not using any vegetable or other Bio oils, it,s refined entirely from WMO=waste motor oil. Veg oil is hard to come by in this neck of the woods and Biodiesel can't be used in winter up here anyway so I started experimenting with cracking WMO at high temperature and viola, Diesel.

dgeist · **Posted:** Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:09 pm

nursecosmo wrote:

Did you read my post?

Apparently, I didn't.... Good luck not fouling the injectors. I don't know if I'd be as brave (although I guess I took the same chance when I ran B100 last March...).

Dan

No Gas, But Can Still Get Diesel

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