OT/Tips on buying gasoline

JOB

Member
I recieved this in an e-mail a little while back it does make sense. If you think it makes sense pass it along

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline. But here in California we are paying $3.75 to $4.10 a gallon. My line of work is petroleum for about 31 years now. So here are some tips to get more of your moneys worth for every gallon.

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose CA. we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period through the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands. So buying in the afternoon or in the evening.......your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When you are filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode; if you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages, low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on the low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping at the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you are getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying it’s empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere. So it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline tanker truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT FILL UP; most likely the gasoline in the underground tank is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

To have an impact, this needs to reach millions of gasoline buyers.
 
Is'nt the under ground temperature fairly
constant...so if the gas is underground..it
wouldn't really matter what time of day it was
pumped?
 
Every gas pump I've ever seen has a tag on it that says temperature compensated to 15C. Not all tanks are underground either. 1 deg. makes a difference? The guy that wrote that article says he's been in the petroleum industry for 31 years. Never getting promoted past being the pump jockey might explain why he doesn't know what he's talking about.
 
JOB, Check your website again you have only 1,000,000 gal. capacity, not 16 million. But you should add that we should buy gas in the AM before the station gets the call to increase the prices.
 
Only using the pump on it's slowest speed is my personal favorite.

Filling a full size pickup on full bore is already a marathon.
 
The only "tip" having ANY merit is the one about not filling as the tanker is dumping to underground tanks.The rest is total BS.
 
Here in Iowa our ground temp doesn't change during the day at the depth the tanks are at. We don't have a vapor recovery system on our pumps where I live (yet). All modern gasoline burning vehicles have a non-vented tank so no vapors are lost. If the pump has a filter, it should catch the junk the tanker stirs up, if it doesn't, the idea is plausible. Remember the old Standard Oil commercial "fill it up filtered"? Jim
 
I have bought 3 different brands of service station dispensers in the last 30 years. The last ones were fully computerized and cost me a arm and leg and not one of them compensated for temperature correction. All had fuel filters on them. The diesel filters were smaller micros then the gasoline. I always get my fuel at a station with underground tanks and never worry about the time of day. The stations with above ground tanks I only patronize when 50 degrees or below and the tempature has been there for a while. The only tempature correction I ever saw is when the tanker loaded up at the pipeline and it is based on 60 degrees.
 
I remember that slogan. Thought it was a pretty good idea until I talked to a buddy that worked at the big Standard station/truck stop on I-80 and U.S.65. Told me that those cartridges clogged up within a week and were removed so the housing still looked like there was still a filter there. Cartridges were expensive and that took revenue that their station, at least, didn't want to lose. Cheaper to say "Put a Tiger in your Tank". No way to prove that!
 
They might say it's a tiger, but it's almost certain that you're just putting algae and plankton in your tank.
 
Mabey temperature compensation is a local thing... but every pump I can remember in the last 25 years or more around here has clearly been marked as 'volume corrected to 15 C'.
I don't know exactly what that entails but I assume it means there is some form of temperature correction involved. Expansion/contraction can hit the station owner just as well as the consumer...
Most pumps in later times have also been equipped with spin on micronic filtration so i wouldn't worry about dirt/water very much either. With the volumes going through some stations today I don't think there'd be much time for anything to settle out. There's probably a tanker load a day going through the station where I buy most of my gas.

Rod
 
The temperature compensation means, that if the fuel were at 60 degrees F, you would be getting that many gallons.

I try to buy fuel someplace where they handle a lot of it. That's the only real factor I have found to make much difference. Above-ground tanks might too, but I don't see them much.

Keeping the tank above half full makes sense, in that the electric pump in the tank on modern cars is cooled by the fuel.

Other than that, I call BS on it, too.

Although, often I can't run the nozzle on full. Something about a truck-sized nozzle filling a pickup, just doesn't work when you try filling it quickly.
 
... and since the fuel is at some other temperature... the amount displayed is corrected to 15 C while the amount delivered could be more or less in terms of actual volume. At the end of the day you're getting the same BTU value in the fuel which is what it's about anyway.

Rod
 
If the fuel is warmer than 60, you get a less-dense fuel. If it is colder than 60, you get more-dense fuel.

The volume is correct, you got that many gallons. But, the BTU content per volume changes, while the BTU content per weight doesn't. So technically, you are getting less fuel, even though the volume is correct. They try to set the pumps so you will get the right number of BTU, but they can only get so close.

Truck stops usually buy fuel by weight. The tanker scales before and after he unloads. That way, there is no temperature correction, because they figure the gallons by the density of fuel at 60 degrees. Then, if the fuel is hot, they might be able to turn around and sell a 10,000 gallon load of fuel as 11,000 gallons. If it's cold, though, they may only sell it as 9,000 gallons.

NASCAR crews also figure fuel mileage by weight, and not volume.

I think I made that make sense. Only took three tries.
 
What I should have said originally is that I don't know the specifics of how the pumps make the adjustments.
The theory part I understand quite clearly...
Wether or not the stations do what they 'claim' is another story.
I don't see why they could not make density adjustments on the fly tho.
The bottom line with volume correction tho... the display is corrected to read volume at a specified density and you pay on that price/volume... but the actual volume you get in your tank could be more OR less than the amount on the display... but you still get the BTU that you paid for.

Rod
 
With the Temperature-Compensating Pumps, you get the fuel volume corrected for the temperature it is actually at. All they need is a temp sensor and some more computer programming. With the TCP's, you would actually be buying the gas by the weight instead of volume, even though it would still show as volume. So you would also be getting the proper BTU content that you are paying for.
 
I Spent 15 years in the industry, got out in 1986, got tired of the industry ex's expecting me to screw the public. Boy are they really putting it to us now.
 

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