Fuel to burn

I returned home to find a message on my answering machine. A cousin let me know of another place looking to get rid of waste vegetable oil. Even though my storage is already near to overflowing, I can't say no. Finding WVO to burn in my diesel can be a feast or famine situation. It's the summer tourist season and restaurants are busy. Americans eat a lot of fried food.

Free motor fuel changes the math on a lot of things. For example, sometimes it's cheaper to drive home for lunch rather than eating in town. If we were paying for fuel, eating at a restaurant would be cheaper. Shopping further away is worth while. It makes sense to haul my own firewood rather than have it delivered. It makes living out in the woods way more affordable.

As the price of regular fuel has gone up, the number of visitors to our house has gone down. Most other people are in the petroleum economy. Hard numbers on motor fuel usage is hard to get. In my opinion, the government statistics are pretty squishy. Anecdotally, looking at the people around me, they are driving a lot less. Our home out in the woods is further away than it used to be -measured in miles per dollars.

We are driving around in a one ton van while paying the fuel bill of a moped. I keep expecting this loop hole to get closed sooner or later. While it has gotten a lot harder to score free or cheap WVO on the road, I still have good sources at home.

At least WVO stores a lot safer than gasoline or even diesel. It's not explosive and is biodegradable. Storing hundreds of gallons of diesel would require special handling. Don't even think about storing large volumes of gasoline. Really, as a former firefighter, please don't do it. Veggie is stored in the same 4.5 gallon jugs the restaurants got the fresh oil in. All I do is pile it on shelves or pallets. Once it settles a while, I just pour it right in the fuel tank. On board filters take the French fries and chicken bits out.

There are other grease burners in my area, so I've sent them some of my surplus. Between that and all the traveling planned for the summer, I should be able to just barely find storage for all my free fuel. When the cool weather returns, those stocks will be drawn down, so I'm stocking up while I can.

-Sixbears