Blue Sky Shipping owners Charles Whitwam (L) and Chanaan Nusbaum fuel their pickup-and-delivery trucks with 100 percent biodiesel, including batches they produce at their business.
Blue Sky Shipping bills itself as the only transportation company in the San Francisco Bay Area – maybe in the nation – to run entirely on biodiesel. Blue Sky primarily serves a few dedicated clients in the Bay Area. Its straight trucks run on biodiesel processed from yellow grease feedstock, waste cooking oil the company collects from local fine restaurants, which change their oil more often than fast-food places. Blue Sky’s owners process the oil themselves home brew-style in plastic vats set up in their worn industrial space in blue-collar Richmond, Calif. Half the company’s necessary biodiesel supply then comes from yellow grease collected by another supplier, and Blue Sky supplements its own stock with biodiesel processed by another source.
The company produces about 500 gallons of bio
