Helpful hints for the next time you fill up your car

Gas Pumping Tips from someone in the Petroleum pipeline business!! 
 
I've been in the petroleum business for a little over 4 years.  I currently work for Star Fuel, LLC.  We deliver about 3 million gallons a week from our KC hub, and about 2 to 3 times that much out of our various hubs in Oklahoma.  We haul gasoline, gasohol, and diesel fuel.  (Just so you know where I'm coming from.)  Here are some tricks to help you get your money's worth.

1.        Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool.  Remember that the vast majority service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground; and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline.  When it gets warmer gasoline expands, so if you're filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not exactly a gallon.  In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and temperature of the fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products) are significant.  Every truckload that we load is temperature-compensated so that the indicated gallonage is actually the amount pumped.  A one-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for businesses, but service stations don't have temperature compensation at their pumps .
 2.        If a tanker truck is filling the station's tank at the time you want to buy gas, do not fill up; most likely dirt and sludge in the tank is being stirred up when gas is being delivered, and you might be transferring that dirt from the bottom of their tank into your car's tank .  If you really need gas, wait about 3-5 minutes, and then start pumping.  At that point, you should be good to go.
 3.        Fill up when your gas tank is half-full (or half-empty), because the more gas you have in your tank the less air there is and gasoline evaporates rapidly, especially when it's warm.  (Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating 'roof' membrane to act as a barrier between the gas and the atmosphere, thereby minimizing evaporation).  In the summer here in the midwest, it's nothing for a load to loose 100 gallons of gas to evaporation just in the time it takes to get from the loading rack to the delivery point.
 4.        If you look at the trigger you'll see that it has three delivery settings: slow, medium and high.  When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to the high setting.  You should be pumping at the slow setting, thereby minimizing vapors created while you are pumping.  Hoses at the pump are corrugated; the corrugations act as a return path for vapor recovery from gas that already has been metered.  If you are pumping at the high setting, the agitated gasoline contains more vapor, which is being sucked back into the underground tank ' so you're getting less gas for your money.  Hope this will help ease your 'pain at the pump'.

One more thing, in some states (such as Kansas and Missouri) the laws regarding labeling of the pumps at a gas station were changed and stations no longer have to inform you which pumps, if any, are putting out gasohol.  One clue, however, is if the mid-grade is the same price, or cheaper, than the regular.  Gasohol used to be really hard on engines, but the newer engines are designed to run on gasohol with no problem.  The only kicker is that gasohol reduces your gas mileage by about 10-15%.  On my car, that's about 30-50 miles fewer out of each tank.  That means that I have to buy an "extra" tank of gas every 6-10 weeks.  At about $27 per tank, that works out to an extra $135-$250 a year.  Fair warning, since gasohol is so much cheaper for stations to use, almost every single station we service in Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri is selling gasohol as their "regular" gas.  Most of them run the exact same gasohol as their "mid-grade" too. 

And finally, one last thing.  If your owners manual doesn't specifically say that your car *has* to run on premium, then don't waste your money.  It's not that much better than regular, and there's a chance it's really gasohol.  (Ethanol raises gasoline's octane level.  Octane is the basis for the grading system.  Mid-grade gasoline with 10% ethanol has the same octane level as premium gasoline, and is therefore able to be legally sold as premium at a greatly reduced cost to the station owner.)

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