Living and learning is what life’s all about, right? Yeah, that’s right; I just wish you didn’t have to go through the aches and pains to learn some of those lessons! The biggest learning experience this past year was with Sunoco.

The past two years we have used Sunoco diesel to make our premium diesel from. It is a great low sulfur diesel fuel. It typically has a high cetane and combined with our premium diesel package it gives us a product with around a 50 cetane, a detergent package and extra lubricity. Fortunately, the problems we had weren’t with the fuel itself it was the supply of the fuel.

We made the decision to use Mobil diesel for about 10 days at the end of October until Sunoco had product available again. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Mobil diesel…it just has a lower cetane than Sunoco. This in itself wouldn’t have been a problem under normal conditions. Unfortunately the last 10 days of October were 15-20 degrees below normal!

For some of our customers that were running older diesel engines and/or large ones, they noticed engines starting harder. Some had to resort to using starting fluid to get them started. When I found out Sunoco was going to be out of product for 7-10 days I made the decision on what diesel to use; there were two big factors.

The first was time of the year. The lows for that period should have been around the mid to upper 30’s not the low teens! I figured by the time it got cold, we would be done with Mobil product and back with Sunoco.

The second factor that added to my decision was the prices at the time. BP/Amoco was my other choice but BP/Amoco was about 14 cents a gallon more.

So my decision was between two diesel products that I liked and I chose the one that I thought would do the job given the circumstances. Unfortunately, it was a bad decision for anyone that had a problem.

It is not unusual to have a terminal run out of product with out notice. What typically happens is I order a load of Sunoco to be delivered to Hemlock or Breckenridge, the driver gets to the terminal and they’re out. So I get a phone call at night and they want to know what to do. I can’t go without diesel so I have to decide where they should go. My choices start getting restricted based on the drivers time and what terminals we can go to. My primary #2 diesel is Sunoco, my second choice is BP/Amoco and my third choice is Mobil.

This is one of our bulk storage plants located in Hemlock, MI.

Because of this problem I have decided to keep BP/ Amoco Premier Diesel year round. We will continue to offer our Sunoco Premium Diesel and low sulfur #2 Diesel. But it will allow us to be more consistent in the products we have on hand.

We all want the best fuel at the best price and that’s what I want to give you. I obviously don’t have any control over the price spreads between these products though. If you have a desire to have only one product or the other, you need to tell your drivers…Especially if you want only BP/Amoco Premier Diesel.

As always we strive to offer the best products available!