I was stumbling around the Flying J website the other day and came across the e-mail addresses for the company's top executives, so I thought I would send an e-mail to Doug Wells, who seems to be in charge of their marketing and supply. I asked him to consider carrying Biodiesel at their locations and mentioned how I thought it would be a great publicity tool for their company to show they are strong supporters of alternative fuels and are at the forefront of making alternative fuel sources easily accessible to America's driving public.

Hopefully, it will help that I am a member of their frequent fueler program, so they know I am an actual customer. I included my membership number, so they could check how much I actually buy ($270 last month). BTW, if you're not a member of their frequent fueler program, you should be. It doesn't cost anything to join and it gives you an automatic 1 cent/gallon discount (even more if you make certain amounts of non-fuel purchases there every month).

I will post again if I hear back from them.

 

I agree totally,
If Flying J gets on board word will spread big time and we will see BIO prices get lower and lower. I don't use it now as there are no suppliers near me but as an O/O I spend about $1,300 + a month on #2 diesel and would love to give Bio Diesel a try, My buddy runs it in his N14 Cummins and his only gripe is cost and limited availability, he paid $2.71 a gallon last week same as diesel but you feel better about it not giving it to big oil.

 

What blend you buying, where at??? I am getting B2 at the pump here in Jefferson WI for my diesel suburban. Only 5cent more than regular #2. I would like to go up to B20 in the summer months.

 

They could single handily change the view of Bio Diesel for all of us.
Word would spread soooo fast.

 

I work for a company that handles bio. For it to be widely available to the general public there still has to be a few details/problems to be worked through. Most noteably is the issue of it gelling so bad in the cold and a reliable conditioner is not yet available. Second of all is bio has a shorter shelf life requiring smaller purchases/deliveries and of course as with everything there are political issues.

 

hydrosmith. What is the shelf life of biodiesel?

 

Good idea XH2O , I sent a message as well to the Flying J suits. This is the type of action that at least gets these executives talking. This is a product that appeals to a diverse crowd - from VW lovin tree huggers trying to save the penguins, to PSD drivers like myself trying to deprive terrorists of their entertainment funds. It's all good.

 

A couple of things here, #1 shelf life, we have on our shelf Biodiesel that we made from Virgin Soybean oil that is 1 year and 4 months old, there is nothing growing in it, not changing color, and still is crystal clear yellow, you can read a newspaper through it, I have heard this issue before about shelf life and also one Company claiming bacteria growth, We have seen neither of these be an issue with Biodiesel in our makings.

The second issue that I seem to get minds thinking on here is, in the United States we have alot of ground that is being used for growing of crops that is sent by Barges' overseas because we either do not demand them or there is better money for them overseas. Coming down to the wire here, what is the price you are willing pay to drive your vehicle, if crude oil became non existent and we could no longer get the crude oil for our needs, do I hear 5 dollars a gallon, how about 10? Is this what it has to come to before we start to think about what we have here in the USA as our resource for fuel?

Biodiesel is a fuel we have on our soil in the USA. We do not have oil wells here capable of doing what we need for our use, We have more growable land than all other lands in the world, and we still use Diesel fuel to run in our diesel engines, Stop here again, the Diesel engine when it was designed in the late 1800's by Rudolph Diesel, was designed to run on peanut oil, not diesel fuel. Go figure. Which part of our world governments made this happen. What price do we pay to make and burn our own fuel? Do we pay for it by the gallon, quart, family size on quantity?, or is it when Biodiesel is more cost effective than said diesel fuel from foreign countries from crude oil that you can..so called still get.

Just thinking about this brings back the Mad Max or Water World movies, trading to get something else, like fuel, I have you want, I am the only supplier for miles around, I want this from you to give you this much, not as much as you want. What are you going to do when you get up in the morning, late for work, jump in the truck, and no gas or fuel in the tank, stop at the local gas station to get some fuel and there is a sign there stating, out of fuel, fuel supplies have been cut off indefinetly, we do not know if we are going to have anymore, you go to the next gas station, they same the same thing, then you run out of fuel trying to find a fuel station that can, what...help you now? Stop and think about not having fuel for your daily routine, it won't matter what you drive. I talk about this alot with other customers coming in my shop, there is a quick conclusion that the joke is on us here in the USA, we need the jobs here in the USA and our fuel from the USA, stop sending and recieving from the foreign countries. Use our own resources, this is what we have. Let them sell there crude to everyone else. There is alot of good information on the internet about making your own fuel and making it well and to your needs. We need to wake up, and we need to wake up now!

 

Your absolutely correct BW , not only are we shipping grain out on barges we are also paying farmers not to grow crops to keep the prices high. Since I started researching alternative fuels , I have been amazed that we are not producing more biodiesel then we are. It makes so much more sense then gasahol or hydrogen - both of which require a seperate infastructure for distribution - and hydrogen requires gobs of elect to produce. With the land we have avail, with the most efficient farming techniques and transportation system in the world we could be out producing the euroweenies in biodiesel in just a couple years. To me this just seems like a no brainer, that is until you add politics and advocacy groups (corp lobbyists) into the mix then things come to grinding halt. Theres still plenty of money to be made in producing this stuff, get Exxon to sell a tanker and buy a combine, get the states to drop taxes on alternative fuels (no luck in WA though, were taxing everything that aint nailed down and double taxing things that are nailed down) , get engine makers (like FORD) to build engines that will in fact run on pure bio.

This can happen but we are going to have to make it happen.

Incidently BW, whereabouts in PA are you - am heading to Warren PA over 4th July to visit in-laws.

 

As in all things that have $$$ attached. Politics will take precedence over good practice every time. Beaurocracy is the devil that makes us all dance the tune.

 

It needs to start somewhere, I may as well put a plug in right here, I am in Central PA, State College PA area. There is incentives right now from the Federal government for anyone manufacturing to a standard, monetary credits are available for using Virgin oil (VO) or Waste Vegetable oil (WVO) to manufacture Biodiesel, there is also a use credit available and a mixing credit. All are slated to run out by the end of 2005 but they may extend the credits another year. I agree that we need to make it happen. Lets make them conform to us, not to the Beaurocrats, we the people own the government, it's about time they start working for us here on USA soil.

 

Diesel's motor was converted to burn coal oil, which Austria had in abundance.

I believe Ford still purchases Navistar motors for its PSD.

Most currently available diesel motors will run on 100% Biodiesel. Hoses will have to be switched as Bio has a higher solvency than Petrodiesel.

Someone also mentioned that Gasahol requires a seperate infrastructure for delivery and distribution. That is not true, Gasahol uses exactly the infrastructure as regular gasoline. Just rubber parts need to be replaced with Vitrol or other material resistant to Alchol.

 

"Most currently available diesel motors will run on 100% Biodiesel"
This may be true of foreign cars but the Ford 6L PSD uses a high pressure injector system and you will gum them up using B100. The 7.3L engines can run on B100 far as I know. I believe both Chevy and Dodge use high pressure injectors as well in their newer engines.

"Hoses will have to be switched as Bio has a higher solvency than Petrodiesel."
Older vehicles yes but newer vehicles use different type of gaskets and hoses and do not need to be replaced when using biodiesel.

"Just rubber parts need to be replaced with Vitrol or other material resistant to Alchol." Only on vehicles pre-1998.

I stand corrected on seperate infastructure for gasahol but my point was biodiesel makes far more sense then the rest of the alternative fuels. The diesel engine is more efficient then the gas and biodiesel is far cheaper to produce then hydrogen and the diesel engine can run on pure bio whereas the gas engine cannot run on pure methanol. Both ethanol and methanol produce emissions that is either cancer causing or induces global warming.
To me this is a no brainer.

 

The 7.3 also uses a high pressure injection system. The big difference between the 7.3 and 6.0 injectors is that the 6.0 uses "split shot" injectors which deliver the fuel in two pulses instead of one, thus running quieter. If the 6.0 injectors would be damaged by B100 then I would guess that the 7.3 injectors also would.

I wholeheartedly agree that the biodiesel is the best choice for the near future and we are wasting lots of resources that could be used to make the stuff. Like some of the others here have pointed out though, it will probably require a great deal of public dissatisfaction and action before things change.

 

There is another site that I have visited that they where talking about the 6.0 Ford, clogging the fuel filters from new mileage, I am talking starting off with a new vehicle totally, less than 1000 miles, I have read that there are some with alot of miles on that had issues first off, they kept changing the filters and the issue goes away as if there is a product that is separating from the fuel tank clogging the filters and has nothing to do with the so called polymerizing effect, I would like to personally get ahold of one of these filters, split it down and run some tests in our lab. As for the hoses and rubber components in contact with Biodiesel fuels, I have spent quite abit of time on this issue, fuel injection pumps since 1990 have all been changed to a Viton driveshaft seal in most systems from OEM and rebuild kits. The fuel lines, well as long as they have a plastic (flourolastomer) liner on the inside of the fuel line, there is no issue of fuel line degradation. This is what we have seen. Broken wire