"You've got to do something for your own fuel, or accept the consequences of not." --Howes lead chemist Jed Talbot
How do you know the fuel you’re getting from your neighborhood No. 2 diesel pump is quality? The $6-and-more-per-gallon price isn’t going to tell you much, that’s for sure, and chemist Jed Talbot is on a mission to make sure it’s abundantly clear.
For this week’s Overdrive Radio podcast, we're dropping in with Talbot and Howes Products Marketing Lead Rich Guida for plenty detail about a brand-new diesel study showing wide variance in performance characteristics across the United States.
Early this year during the winter period, Howes sent three members of the company's long-running trucking-living-legend Hall of Fame out across the country -- Canada, too -- to collect diesel fuel samples straight from the pumps along their routes:
- Trucker-songwriter Tony Justice, well-known for longtime Overdrive Radio listeners
- Owner-operator Kate Whiting, known for her 1970s pristine W900 "Cherry Pie"
- "Trucker Josh" Giesbrecht, likewise an owner-operator with a big Youtube following for his long-running channel
Back at the lab, Talbot and team then tested each sample for a variety of characteristics -- cloud point and cold filter plugging point, lubricity, biodesel and water content, flash point.
Measurements varied widely, to say the least, with full results available via the Howes site.
All samples tested were labeled No. 2 diesel, yet some should have said something different, according to Talbot. One of the samples had a whopping 6% of biodiesel in it, and should have been labeled B5, for instance. In terms of water content results weren’t much better, with big implications for wear parts in the fuel system. Fuel filters, too.
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"Water in fuel, particularly in very tight tolerances," said Talbot, is "like molecular sandpaper. It's not good. It's really abrasive, particularly under pressure," and also contributes to microbial growth. "Microbes don't grow in diesel. It won't support them. But if you've got a lot of suspended water now you've got a place for microbes to live all fat and happy."
What can you do about it other than avoiding buying diesel from the side of the road?
There's no eye or sniff test, or test strip, to tease out quality characteristics, but in the podcast find ways to establish a baseline with treatments, in use by a majority of owner-operators in Overdrive’s audience year-round, according our past research.
[Related: Fuel treatments increasingly part of owner-operators' PM routines]
"When you think about the journey of fuel from the refinery to when you're pulling the handle," Rich Guida said, "it's on railcars. It's stored in places for a little while. Maybe it sits in warm temperature and then gets gets to a cold temperature and then it's in a truck traveling overland. So there's tons of ways water" and other contaminants could be introduced.
Varition in lubricity, too, or the lubricating properties of the fuel for tight metal-on-metal tolerances. While none of the samples were truly out-of-spec with an HFRR wear scar above the standard, the variation was huge. In that case, the lower the better. Treatment can help reduce that measure, offering potential for extended life for injectors, fuel pumps, cylinder heads all.
"So it really boils down to this," Guida said. "It's kind of a crapshoot with what you're getting" at the pump. "And the best way to avoid that is to, to treat consistently and get into a routine."
Take a listen:
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