Nobody here buying diesel for a truck, tractor, heavey-duty rototiller?

Joel

Gas and diesel are both produced from the same crude oil so one would think the prices would be locked together.

A lot of folks around here are getting diesels since you can run them on used restaurant oil. 'Course their car smells a bit like french fries as they go by, but if you don't mind that it all works out. I think diesels can also be modified to run on things like kerosene ("parafin" I think to some English types) and diesel is a LOT SAFER to store.

The other thing is to compare the gallons per mile, I'd think. All the big trucks use diesel, there's gotta be some good reasons why.

They generally move with the price of crude, though diesel was more expensive than gas around here for a while. Look for yourself at gasbuddy.com, or google something like "fuel price history"

Jason, thanks for the tip. I did check out gasbuddy. I did not find a link on there for diesel - but maybe I should look again, maybe I missed something. I liked the graph gasbuddy provides of changing (mostly rising) gasoline prices - looking at the six-year version of the graph is especially interesting. The rate of increase is becoming pretty steep.

Joel

Ran across an interesting column in the current issue of Car and Driver on why diesel is so much more expensive than gasoline. It seems to be refinery issue.

In Europe they use a refining technique called hydrocracking, which produces approximately equal quantities of diesel and gasoline. But because Europeans use a high percentage of diesel cars, they use up all the diesel they refine and export the surplus gasoline to the U.S.

In the U.S. we use a refining technique called catalytic cracking, which produces three times as much gasoline as diesel from each barrel of oil. Because we don't have enough refineries in the U.S. (thanks Congress) we use up all the gas we produce and buy gas from Europe. But we can't buy diesel from Europe because they don't have any to spare, and we aren't making very much, so we're short of diesel. Shortage equals high price.

One new refinery using the European hydrocracking technique would go a long way to solving the problem, but that would require Congress to stand up to the environmental lobby, so don't hold your breath.

montesa vr, you wrote: "One new refinery using the European hydrocracking technique would go a long way to solving the problem, but that would require Congress to stand up to the environmental lobby, so don't hold your breath."

Stand up to the environmental lobby? Not saying that you're wrong about this... but why would it require that? (By the way, I'm in Canada... but I feel elected political reps should have the moral fiber to stand up to any and all lobbies.)

Joel

Joel, What is the price of gas (reg) in your area now?
ours is 126.9/l it's gone up 6 cents in a week.

Well, I'm working from home, and I can go days - sometimes a week, without driving off the place here. And that means I'm not filling up too often (certainly not every week), hence I get a little out of touch with the prices. But last time I filled, it was roughly $110/litre for 87 octane.

J.