Trash Day and Oil Jugs

When restaurants get fryer oil, it comes in 4.5 gallon jugs. My local restaurant puts the used oil back in the jugs they came in. At my convince, I collect them from a garage next to the restaurant.

One of my regular duties as a husband is to take the trash out. Someone has to. Most weeks I put out a bag or two of crushed 4.5 gallon vegetable oil jugs. They cannot be recycled because they had oil in them. It messes up the recycling process.

They are not particularly strong jugs. In fact, in recent years they've been getting thinner and lighter. Sometimes I'll use the ones in better condition a few times to collect oil from other sources. Once in a while one will spring a leak. Good thing I'm hauling them around in a converted ambulance. Those vehicles were made to be hosed out. I'm sure mine has had worse things on the floor than waste veggie.

Each jug weights about 35 pounds. Yesterday I picked up 25 of them. That's 875 pounds of fuel. Guess what I do to stay in shape? The money saved by using free veggie adds up. That's over 112 gallons of free fuel. It's replacing about $450 worth of diesel. That certainly makes it worth the handling. I've a rack to stack them on for when I need them. I always use the older ones first as they've had longer for the junk to settle out of them.

When I crush up those jugs for the trash, I think about all the money I'm not spending on motor fuel. Just like the government, I don't have to factor in the price of fuel when figuring the cost of living.

-Sixbears