Vegetable Oil

Joe is leaving tomorrow morning (Monday) to go to Golden Fuel Systems in Springfield, MO, to have the vegetable oil system installed in the truck. In case you're wondering, we're going to run the truck (a 1997 Ford F-250 diesel) on straight veggie oil (SVO). We will collect waste vegetable oil from restaurants, filter it, store it in a separate tank in the bed of our truck, and use it as fuel. We'll get about the same gas mileage as diesel, but it will be free!
There is an Italian restaurant in town that we've become regulars at. We got to know the owners, and have been telling them about our plans. Italian restaurants don't use much oil, but when we ran into the owner at Lowes yesterday, she insisted that we come by this morning to take a 5 gallon jug of used oil. So this is our first official oil (aside from the 2 gallons of brand new vegtable oil that friends gave us at our going away party!)

This is what oil collection will usually look like. Behind every restaurant, next to their dumpster, you should find a container like the one above---marked "waste oil" or something like that. So we drive up, check to see if there is any oil and if it is worth taking. Sometimes the oil is poor quality and would be too much of a hassle to filter---fast food joints are known for having a lot of oil, but since they fry stuff in it over and over, it's not good to use (although things are changing as they move to higher quality oils). Asian restaurants seem to have the best oil. So if the oil is good, then we go into the restaurant and ask to speak with a manager, and if they okay us taking the oil, we pump it out and filter it into our tank.
You can see our tank in the right of this picture. It holds 80 gallons--so if we fill it all the way up, we should be able to travel around 1000-1500 miles (depending on if we're towing the RV or not) before having to find more veggie oil. So the fueling stops may take longer (we may have to stop at several restaurants before we find good oil, plus it takes 20-30 minutes to filter it all), but we can go a lot farther once full---and again, it's FREE! And it's better for the environment! We'll also still have a tank for diesel--we have to start the truck on diesel so that the vegetable oil gets heated up enough to run through the engine. People say that a tank of diesel will last a whole year when used for starting the engine.

So why aren't more people doing this? One reason is that it takes a certain personality type---one that my husband fits perfectly. He's a scavenger and loves finding things for free. Each fuel stop is an adventure, not just a convenient stop-off at any exit. So you have to be patient, and committed to the idea. We'll keep you updated on how the vegetable oil hunt goes once the system is installed next week. We're planning on leaving Jonesboro a day or so after Labor Day--we're going up to MI for awhile before heading west. So we'll have plenty of practice finding oil soon!