Biodiesel Blather
I just had the interesting experience of spending half my week with fleet maintenance managers at the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Annual Meeting & Expo, and the other half of my week with biodiesel producers, distributors and retailers at the National Biodiesel Congress. I met with a lot of intelligent, knowledgeable people at both events, but at one event there was a whole lot of bad intelligence about the other event. The fleet maintenance managers, it turns out, have some pretty wrongheaded ideas about biodiesel… in fact, some of the things I heard brought to mind Mark Twain’s famous quote: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Well, here’s what some of the fleet maintenance managers at TMC “know for sure”: They know for sure that biodiesel is causing aluminum fuel tanks on their big rigs to rust out from the inside out. They know for sure that there are absolutely NO quality standards for biodiesel. And they know for sure that, from the moment it’s produced to the moment you pump it into your fuel tank, biodiesel does not pass through a single filter.
After hearing these claims being made by worried fleet maintenance managers at TMC, I had a chance to ask some biodiesel experts at the Biodiesel Congress to respond. One expert did admit that, if you made your own biodiesel at home from questionable feedstock and with absolutely no quality control, you could rot out your fuel tank from the inside out. But then, you could also fill your tank with regular diesel fuel that happens to have water contamination, and you’d have the same result.
In response to the other claims being made about biodiesel at the TMC meeting, the biodiesel experts I talked to simply shook their heads in disbelief and said “We have a lot of work to do.” Now, in all fairness, there were a few fleet maintenance managers at TMC who spoke up in defense of biodiesel, but they were few and far between. The sad fact is that many fleets will not go near biodiesel, because they have bad information. Will they be willing to consider the other side of the story? Maybe, but as one TMC fleet guy told me, “Maybe the biodiesel folks should come and talk to us and hear what’s really going on out there.”
February 12th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I personally have been running soy biodiesel in my Dodge/cummins diesel pick-ups, year ’round in Nebraska, for over 5 years with no troubles. I work for a school district that has been running soy biodiesel for 3 years in our buses, with only minor problems ( fuel filters plugging on older buses when we first started biodiesel use. The problem eventually went away as the sediment in the tank got flushed out by the biodiesel) I’m a believer in alternate fuels in general, and biodiesel in particular. I suscribe to your magazine and find many of the articles helpful as many of the maintanence and repair procedures are the same with school buses as they are with medium and heavy duty trucks, however, it would be nice to maybe see an occasional article on school bus maintanence and repair
February 12th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
We just did a story on school bus maintenance in the August, 2007 issue of Fleet Maintenance http://www.fleetmag.com/print/Fleet-Maintenance/Get-on-the-Bus/1532 and we’ll be doing a bigge story on school buses this coming August. Stay tuned!
February 12th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
In Snohomish county , WA we have been running B20 bio-deisel blend since January 2006 in a broad range of vehicles and equipment and have only experienced minor problems. ASTM will be issuing a new B20 standard in June or July and this will be a major step toward ensuring quality fuel.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
It was hard to have a conversation with anyone; there were so many people talking.
Yogi Berra