Roder5
Members
I've noticed a certain amount of paranoia regarding supermarket fuel, engine oil and filters.
With regard to the fuel, I recall this myth coming up several years ago and it being dispelled by "Which" or "What Car " when they explained there were limited numbers of refineries and all the fuel came from these regardless of brand. Supermarket fuel is cheap because it is a loss leader and entices the motorist into the store . There is also the argument that their fuel is better because it is "fresher" than the less frequently visited filling stations. I did a quick Google and found this:
"I worked for a fuel terminal company. This is how it works: Fuel is delivered in a very small number of pipelines. Terminals are the giant circular tanks that get their product directly from pipelines. If you're on the east coast, it's one of two pipelines. West coast, similar situation, different lines. The lines ship Premium, Regular, Diesel, and Jet fuel. Midgrade is a mixture Regular and Premium made at the time a tanker truck fills up at a terminal.
There are a handful of tanker truck operators in a given geographic area. Some consumer fuel providers, like Exxon, may have their own fleet of trucks. In any case, here's the important part. Every time a tanker truck driver (or the dispatcher) is tasked with obtaining fuel from a terminal, they select from the lowest price available among the local terminals. It's all the same fuel. They fill up the truck, and then deliver this fuel to the gas stations they service. The gas station owner does not care where the fuel came from.
Like in other businesses, there may be competitive agreements in place where, for instance, one tanker company gets a deal if they do business with one particular terminal. That has no effect at all on the fuel - remember - it's all the same fuel. If one terminal is out of Regular at the moment, the tanker drives to the next one and get Regular there.
What about additives? One particularly popular "special gas" sold by a particular company just contains two times the amount of the normal additive. This is keyed in by the tanker truck driver before he fills up the tanker at a terminal. Though the marketing for this particular product leads you to believe it's their own additive, it's not. It's the same as everybody else's, just twice as much.
posted by odinsdream at 12:42 PM on August 30, 2009 [6 favorites] "
With regard to engine oil and filter paranoia, I have always used motor factors own brand oil, mainly semi-syn but some full syn, and used their filters. I do a large annual mileage, and have run cars past 200,000 miles without engine grief, my last one a Vauxhall Cav 1.7td did 265,000 miles and did not need the oil topping up between services. I would say the important thing about oil/filter changes is that they are done at the right mileage and/or time and in my case earlier than recommended...maybe my personal paranoia! Motor factors I use are EK Brakes and Unipart; I usually get a good discount.
I'll just finish with a warning over the placebo effect of paying for premium products... you pay more, so you expect more, and fool yourself into thinking your car is running better.
With regard to the fuel, I recall this myth coming up several years ago and it being dispelled by "Which" or "What Car " when they explained there were limited numbers of refineries and all the fuel came from these regardless of brand. Supermarket fuel is cheap because it is a loss leader and entices the motorist into the store . There is also the argument that their fuel is better because it is "fresher" than the less frequently visited filling stations. I did a quick Google and found this:
"I worked for a fuel terminal company. This is how it works: Fuel is delivered in a very small number of pipelines. Terminals are the giant circular tanks that get their product directly from pipelines. If you're on the east coast, it's one of two pipelines. West coast, similar situation, different lines. The lines ship Premium, Regular, Diesel, and Jet fuel. Midgrade is a mixture Regular and Premium made at the time a tanker truck fills up at a terminal.
There are a handful of tanker truck operators in a given geographic area. Some consumer fuel providers, like Exxon, may have their own fleet of trucks. In any case, here's the important part. Every time a tanker truck driver (or the dispatcher) is tasked with obtaining fuel from a terminal, they select from the lowest price available among the local terminals. It's all the same fuel. They fill up the truck, and then deliver this fuel to the gas stations they service. The gas station owner does not care where the fuel came from.
Like in other businesses, there may be competitive agreements in place where, for instance, one tanker company gets a deal if they do business with one particular terminal. That has no effect at all on the fuel - remember - it's all the same fuel. If one terminal is out of Regular at the moment, the tanker drives to the next one and get Regular there.
What about additives? One particularly popular "special gas" sold by a particular company just contains two times the amount of the normal additive. This is keyed in by the tanker truck driver before he fills up the tanker at a terminal. Though the marketing for this particular product leads you to believe it's their own additive, it's not. It's the same as everybody else's, just twice as much.
posted by odinsdream at 12:42 PM on August 30, 2009 [6 favorites] "
With regard to engine oil and filter paranoia, I have always used motor factors own brand oil, mainly semi-syn but some full syn, and used their filters. I do a large annual mileage, and have run cars past 200,000 miles without engine grief, my last one a Vauxhall Cav 1.7td did 265,000 miles and did not need the oil topping up between services. I would say the important thing about oil/filter changes is that they are done at the right mileage and/or time and in my case earlier than recommended...maybe my personal paranoia! Motor factors I use are EK Brakes and Unipart; I usually get a good discount.
I'll just finish with a warning over the placebo effect of paying for premium products... you pay more, so you expect more, and fool yourself into thinking your car is running better.
