It's really cold tonight! I'm just east of Des Moines about 15 miles. Here's what my thermometer says...

 

I don't think thermometer ever got that low, but it was -10 when I checked it yesterday. Plenty cold enough for me... I spent a good amount of the day inside drinking coffee.


On the other hand, spring is only about 60-some odd days away...

 

Damn...that's cold!!! One town in Maine recorded minus 50!!! Time to look for some place warm to live!!!

 

Heard on the news we were colder than the poles... We were selling batteries like there was no more, luckily we had stocked up on them before this, as corporate would never have had enough available. Now if only they would have kept heaters available... Coldest I have ever seen was -36 actual one time in South Dakota, got dang close to that here... My underground water line froze, so now I have no running water in the house until the frost lets go a bit...
Something I have never seen before, I have a gallon of the white bottle of Power Service antigel, that is gelled up.... I went to put some in the tractor when a glob came out, decided against it.... I picked up a half gallon of Howe's, it was still liquid this morning, but the PS is still gelled...

 

Wow that sucks! Both the water line and the anti gel stuff jelling up! That'll be a story for the Grandkids someday. Sometime during the night it ended up hitting -30. The antifreeze in my F150 ended up freezing but it didn't hurt anything fortunately.

 

Yea I don't want to be there thats for sure!!

 

Roger, hope the Howes works for you. My son has used it in his semi for a couple years and it doesn't work. He is starting to use Polar Treat, I think it is called. Supposed to be very good. He gets it from a diesel repair shop.

Yeah, is it cold. I just keep thinking back when we went 16 days without getting above 0. I had livestock then and that was a long stretch. That's interesting about the Power Service.

Sorry to hear about the water line. Would it pay to open a faucet a little to allow any pressure to possibly push through and open the line? I know, I'm dreaming......

 

My big problem right now is that since rural water is supposed to becoming, but due to all the rain last summer, they didn't get here, so I have a 1000 gallon tank that I haul water to for now. If I leave the water on, and leave it unattended, the water could all run out and the pump would be running dry. I guess not an overly big deal, but just means that much more hauling to do.
I had heard another guy that swears by the howes in his semi, so I thought I would give it a try. It stayed liquid when the Power Service was jelly...

 

We had 60/40 with 5 gallons of additive in our underground tanks and then a bottle of Power Service or Polar in each tank. The Power Service quit working and went to only the Polar. That started getting cloudy in the tanks too so they finally just had us dumping a bottle of MeltDown into each tank. I'm sure some of the drivers were dumping another bottle of something in each tank too. The shop boss also went and found a case of bigger micron filters hoping that might help. I'm surprised some of our trucks weren't shooting fire by Friday night.

I think we bought about every bottle of anti-gel in the QC area last week. But we go through about 15,000 gallons of diesel a week.

15 degrees today - didn't barely need a coat.

 

Sam, after that cold, it seems that nice now.

The boy used Meltdown also but still wouldn't go. We put in enough kerosene to make it 10% but until we heated up the tanks, it wouldn't go. As it ran, the fuel vacuum came down quite well and he was able to get his trailer and load. He is going to do his own mix with no.1 to see if that will take care of it when it gets really cold. He has looked at in-tank fuel heaters but hasn't made the decision yet. Have you had any experience with those?

 

No idea on tank heaters - maybe the UPSs in the north use 'em, but I've never seen one here. Heck, our last 6 new tractors don't even have block heaters on them. We have to find places to park them inside over the weekends - sometimes ya gotta wonder who makes those decisions.

And on the mix idea, figure we had 60/40 with enough additive for probably 30,000 gal in a 15,000 gal tank and another quart per 80 gal - and that would still gel. I imagine it gets to a point where it just doesn't do any good to add more. That Melt Down would clear up a tank as you poured it in, but can't see how it could be good for the motor for continuous use.

Maybe hop over to the North Dakota board and see what they do? They gotta know what works best.

 

When I was out on the ranch in South Dakota, we ran straight #1, actually, I did in my tractor, the boss made the mistake of putting some #2 in while the weather was good, then it went back cold. Had to use my tractor, since it was the only one with a loader that wasn't gelled. Most of the time, we just ran the #1, he just had a stupid moment...

 

Thanks for the info guys. He is planning on running a mix, probably close to 50/50 but with the difference in cost for the two, he could pay for a heater rather quickly and not have to worry, (hopefully). At least the heater could be a backup for extremes.

 

went back to work for a couple days last week and had to go out to Anderson IN to the home terminal (only 3rd time I have ever been to my companies office) got talking to the night shop manager about fuel problems and he noted the same thing I have been saying, this ULSD is almost as bad as bio for gelling up. Same thing with your PS Roger, seems the sulfur had a lot to do with it not gelling. AND they can't really blend it (they claim it is, but it's not trust me) seems that all the D1 is still set at aircraft standards which is 500+PPM since they are exempt from these standards, or at best just straight at 500 to meet the old LSD standards and can't be run in the new emissions trucks so by law they can NOT blend it into ULSD (and it's way to costly for the refinaries to get ALL the fuel down to 15ppm).
The shop got a load of "50/50" supposedly blended and tested it, the stuff was clouding at 20 and that is above zeor (by zero it was solid) they dumped 2 5gallon buckets of anti gell per load and then telling the drivers to dump PS in at the listed rate on top of that and they are still having gelling problems on some of the trucks. I have been double dosing our truck and doing ok.

 

Until you mentioned it, never really gave much thought to the #1 blending, didn't really know the ppm rating on it though. With that info, it all makes sense... Same story on the anti gel as well. Surprising the Howe's didn't gel, but it also depends how it would work to keep the fuel from gelling...