Letters to the Editor: Hot Diesel

b>Hot Diesel

Thank you for continuing to cover the hot fuel story that was printed in the Kansas City Star, Aug. 27-30. Your most recent article helps support the idea that this topic deserves an open and complete analysis by the trucking industry.

It also highlighted some of the common myths that have for so long plagued a frank discussion of the topic:

Reality: The only time expansion and contraction has a direct effect on your wallet is at the retail pump. If the fuel is expanded at the pump, then you are getting fewer bangs for your buck.

Myth No. 2: In-ground tanks keep fuel at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so there’s no way the fuel can stay hot.

Reality: That was probably so 40 years ago, when fuel was stored in single-walled metal tanks and turnover was slow. Today’s double-walled fiberglass tanks act like a thermos bottle. Fuel cools much more slowly now, over a much longer time. Also, many large chains are selling fuel at a rate equal to an 8,000 gallon tanker per hour. The fuel is not in the tanks long enough to cool off naturally.

Myth No. 3: Hot fuel is just a political ploy.

Reality: Unless there is a political party that has adopted a campaign plank stating, “Fuel retailers have the unalienable right to buy fuel at cool volumes and sell it at hot volumes even if this damages the U.S. consumer,” this is a consumer issue, not a political one.

Myth No. 4: Cold fuel in the winter offsets the effects of warm summer fuel.

Reality: This may be true in Alaska, where the average fuel temperature is 47 degrees Fahrenheit. However, in 29 states, especially in the middle and southern tiers, seasonal differences do not cancel each other out; summer is warmer than winter is colder.

From a list showing the economic effect of fuel temperature on each state, the bottom 10 states — where consumers are gaining because of cool fuel — are getting extra fuel that totals $178 million in value. In the top 10 states, where consumers are being harmed buying hot fuel, the cost to them is an additional $1.869 billion a year, and that’s 10½ times the savings gained by those cool states. Summer and winter are not a wash in the United States.

Myth No. 5: The cost of fixing the problem far outweighs the benefits to American consumers.

Reality: Retrofitting retail fuel pumps in the United States would cost $300 to $1,000 a pump for adding the thermal probe and turning on the existing temperature-compensating function built into digital pumps. Using the $1,000 per pump figure, that would be $1.9 billion (or as the Star pointed out, five days of profits for the five largest oil producers for the last quarter). It would not require replacement of all pumps at a cost of $25 billion, as oil interests have said. Temperature compensation at the pump would save American consumers $2.3 billion a year, from now on. The fix is less than the amount consumers are being bilked in a single year, so how can they scare us by saying we’ll have to pay more for fuel, when we already are and have been for decades?

It also was interesting to note that some of the parties repeating some of these hot fuel myths are already buying their fuel at the rack where it is temperature-compensated to a standard volume at 60 degrees F. These carriers already have discovered the value of fuel-temperature compensation for themselves.

All should be in favor of getting exactly what they pay for every time they fuel up their vehicles.

John Siebert

i> Team Leader

wner-Operator

ndependent Driver

ssociation Foundation Inc.

rain Valley, Mo.

Hot Diesel

Hot diesel is something I never gave a second thought to, but it makes headlines all over the country because it is ripping off the consumer.

Let’s face the facts: Until someone comes up with an alternative source of energy, or an engine that gets 100 miles to the gallon, the consumer is going to continue to pay through the nose.

This is more smoke and mirrors and the real issues do not get addressed. It was probably more than a year ago that I read an article that stated fuel for transportation (cars and trucks) is responsible for only 40% of the oil that is used in this country. Most of the remainder of the petroleum is used for plastic products. If this is true, why hasn’t the government — or some concerned publication or news source — expressed some concern?

Just look around wherever you are sitting right now. Except for the wood in your office or home, isn’t almost everything else that surrounds you made with plastic, or, at the very least, has plastic parts?

Who knows . . . maybe if we went back to using more steel and that old cheap tin, it would lower the demand for fuel. And then there is the possibility it could even create a few jobs in this country. So my question is, if this is really the problem people say it is, why hasn’t something been done about it? And why don’t we ever see any articles addressing this issue?

Don Lafferty

i> General Manager

niExpress Systems Inc.

aledonia, Mich.

These letters appear in the Oct. 9 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.