Truck Stuff

We wanted to give a little update on our truck and veggie oil. Things are going well with the veggie oil. We (that's the royal we, as this mostly pertains to Joe) definitely had to work some kinks out and get some experience under our belt with collecting oil and using the system, but since we overcame a few hurdles, it's been great.

Joe got permission from 3 places in nearby Rio Vista (a Mexican restaurant with fabulous food, a local grocery store, and another local diner) to put our own 55 gallon barrels behind their places...that way we have a continual supply without having to scout new places every time we need oil.

Joe has dreamed of having a place to store a bunch of oil (several hundred gallons)...and then be able to do a big day of collecting and just have it ready for several months ahead. When we got here, he started looking on Craigslist for those big 250 gallon square industrial containers...they run between $150 and $250. One day we were driving and we passed a farm-like place with a bunch of trucks and equipment, and those big containers. Joe convinced me to stop so he could ask where they got them...and sure enough, he got to talking to the guy who owned the joint and he told Joe that he could take whatever he wanted! So we got THREE of these big containers, plus 3 55-gallon barrels, for free. This kind of stuff always happens to Joe.

He also scored 3 more free 55 gallon barrels at a local bait store...ones that have tops that completely come off, so he can put these behind the restaurants.

One of the nice parts about having all this storage is that once the oil is collected, it can be left to settle and filter down a lot of the junk...and we therefore use less filters when we pump it into the tank. The filters are the only cost involved with running the truck on oil--there is a filter on the tank in the bed of the truck, and then a filter in the pump system. Each filter costs between $10-15....and they last for varying amounts of time. When we pulled the 5th wheel cross-country, we had to change the tank filter every 500 miles because the engine was working so hard. Since we've been here, we've gotten at least 1500 miles on a filter. The pump filter lasts from between 100-200 gallons, depending on the quality of the oil.

We collected about 150 gallons of perfect oil this week at a KFC/Taco Bell. Go figure. The common wisdom is that fast food joints have cruddy oil, but Joe still occasionally checks them. Apparently KFC had a lot of bad press in the last year about how unhealthy their food is, so they switched to using soy oil...which is really good. And this particular restaurant changed their oil frequently.

Usually when we start the truck in the morning and stop the truck at night, we have to run it for a few miles on diesel. When we start it, the engine has to heat up enough for the oil to be the right viscosity. When we're getting ready to stop it for the night, we have to run a few miles worth of gas through it so it's ready to start on clean diesel the next morning. Hopefully that makes sense. Last week Joe plugged in the block heater on the truck at night, hoping it'd stay warm enough to keep it running veggie oil all the time. It worked! So now we're really just running on straight veggie...and only switching to diesel if the truck is going to be parked somewhere (other than the RV) for more than a few hours. This saves us even more money because we're using less diesel.

I posted a few more random photos of our week and the building to a set at Flickr--click here to see them.