By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor KNIGHTSTOWN, Ind. — On his way home to rest before setting out to Kentucky with a load of building materials, truck driver David Graham stopped at the GasAmerica station in Knightstown to fuel up.
Normally, he fills his 300-gallon tank at the Energy Plus near his house in Rushville, Ind. Not long ago, a fellow driver told him the Knightstown truck stop, just off Interstate 70, was selling B10 (a fuel comprised of 10 percent biodiesel/90 percent petroleum diesel).
Graham said he can maneuver his tractor-trailer more easily around the GasAmerica lot and prefers a higher blend of biodiesel – the Rushville station sells only B2, according to the National Biodiesel Board’s locator website www.biotrucker.com
“I can go to Energy Plus stations,” he said. “But I prefer to buy this.”
“We wouldn’t offer it if we weren’t convinced it was a high-quality, economical product,” said Jim Gentry, director of fuel purchasing for GasAmerica Services, Inc., headquartered in nearby Greenfield.
“It’s my job every day to buy fuel at the best price I can find it.”
Though GasAmerica has offered a soy biodiesel B2 blend (98 percent petroleum) since January 2006 at eight of its 76 Indiana stores – it also has 14 in Ohio – Knightstown was the first to start selling B10 last month.
Gentry said some truckers prefer an even higher blend of biodiesel, but GasAmerica is at 10 percent for now because that seems universally acceptable for all diesel engines. Many older ones don’t use fluorinated rubber seals and components, and if biodiesel isn’t sufficiently diluted with petroleum, it has a tendency to seep through natural rubber.
Graham prefers to use B20 when possible – which is sold in only five truck-accessible Indiana stations, according to www.biotrucker.com – but said of the in-state stations he knows selling B10 or higher, Knightstown is the only one right on an interstate.
One supplier from which GasAmerica buys pure soy biodiesel, or B100, is Integrity Biofuels of Morristown, Ind. This is blended with petroleum diesel; as the blender, GasAmerica receives the $1/gallon federal tax credit, which Gentry said is applied at the pump to make the company’s B10 the same price as its regular diesel. He hopes with more production, the price might go down.
Graham has been driving for more than a decade all over the United States and explained he has cleaner burning and better mileage with biodiesel, 3/10- to 1/2-mile more per gallon.
“That adds up, 300 gallons over a long distance,” he said.
His engine performance is better, too. In June 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency began requiring refineries to produce ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel for highway engines (non-road diesels will be required to go to this in 2010).
With loss of sulfur comes loss of lubrication.
“You take lubricity away from (an engine), it slows it down,” Graham said, adding some newer ones are designed to work with lower sulfur. “But there’s not that many new engines out there.”
Biodiesel increases lubricity, which affects engine life, important for drivers who own their rigs. A 2000 International, Graham’s has 670,000 miles, and he hopes to reach at least 1 million.
Even if biodiesel is a few cents more, he said with pure diesel he’d have to buy fuel additives inside the gas station.
“I’d just as soon buy this,” he added, pointing to a B10 pump, then a diesel pump, “as buy that.” This farm news was published in the May 16, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
