Well,
With all the talk of the price of fuel and seeing today first hand what the price is doing, I am starting to rethink what I should be setting up in our coach to provide power. Can anyone tell me the average difference in the price of "off road" fuel vs "road" fuel. All so, is the "off road" available where you generally fill the road tanks, such as truck stops. I see no since in trying to set up the coach for the "off road" fuel if I am going to have to travel out of the way to get it. Seems to me that would negate it right there. Any and all suggestions here would be appreciated as I am up in arms here. Throw it all at me guys.......Thanks......Kysteve..........
Steve it's just the state tax taken off Fedral tax is still in place so price is just less the state tax and some states do not offer off road fuel. some states I worked my equipment in the paper work was so much to me it was not worth a few cents a gallon off have a good day
Here in Pa you would save around 60 cents per gal.
Here in Arizona it would be 18 cents that is the road tax for RVs 26 cents for trucks Oklahoma was 5 cents not worth the paper work
I agree LB that at a nickle or quarter savings it would take a long time to pay for the price of the extra tank and fuel lines alone. What's "the paper work" mean, is that the tax paperwork to fill out at the end of the year, or paper work you have to fill out each time you buy it??
104 are you using it??
How readily available is it??
Kysteve, I cried last winter when I paid 3.00 a gallon for off road. I filled my 300 gallon tank, I'm glad I did now. I should be able to run my equipment and mower all summer at 3.00, and I am feeling smart now. I'm not sure about 60 cents in Pa, I was thinking 30 or 35 cents savings. You would need to run a gen a lot to make it worth it. As the price goes up the percentage saved gets smaller. Tom Y
Steve, if I remember KY just has a 12 cent a gallon tax they use the weight distance tax on trucks like NM and NY, your generator is not going to use enough to justify the cost of a extra tank
LB, we will be traveling fulltimers and following the nascar circut so we will be all over the country. I thought the saving was near half or better but I see the light now. We will search other allternitives.
No-one has mentioned that it is blatently illegal to use off-road diesel on the road. In the UK, where our fuel duty is much, much higher than yours, the difference in the cost of red diesel and white diesel is very large - but then so are the implications of being caught for tax evasion! It really isn't something that should be recommended or even discussed here.
Jeremy
I think he is referring to using off road in his generator?
Quote from: chazwood on May 16, 2008, 06:51:01 AM
I think he is referring to using off road in his generator?
Oh, ok then - sorry if I jumped to the wrong conclusion. There are always small truck operators being caught for using red diesel in their vehicles here to try to save a few bucks, so I assumed that was the same motivation here too.
Apologies!
Jeremy
FWIW, you can get the federal portion of the road tax refunded for any fuel you burn in the genny or diesel furnace.
We have hour meters on both, and I take a reading every year on December 31. I multiply the total annual run hours for each by the average fuel consumption (1.1 GPH for my genny, 0.4 GPH for my Webasto) and submit that on IRS Form 4136 "Credit for Federal Tax Paid on Fuels."
The Federal Excise Tax on diesel is 24.4 cents per gallon, and all of that is refunded to us for any clear diesel we ran through our generator and Webasto. It comes back as part of our federal tax refund (if any -- otherwise it is applied to out tax liability).
As has been noted, each state also levies a differing amount of tax on clear diesel, and getting that back is a different story. We don't bother, because, among other things, we don't keep track of how much we buy where, and where we burn it. BTW, our 350-gallon tank means we can plan our fuel purchases for states where fuel is cheaper; unlike commercial vehicles, we are not mandated to buy fuel proportionally in each state we drive through. By tracking state-by-state retail fuel prices, we end up buying in lower-tax states to begin with. (At the moment, I'm still burning fuel I bought in Mexico for $2.11 per gallon.)
If I had designed the fuel tank arrangement from scratch, I would have used a separate tank for the genny and Webasto, with a pump arrangement to send road fuel from the main engine tank to the separate tank if needed. That would have given us the option to buy dyed diesel when available for the appliances. But my bus came with the 350-gallon main tank, and with that kind of capacity already on board, it just did not make sense to add another tank. YMMV.
-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com
I heard that the farmers here in Washington are using road fuel in place of off-road fuel. The state charges sales tax on off-road fuel and the prices have gotten high enough that the sales tax is more than the road tax.
Sean, in my case it was a little different I could write off the full price with the taxes.I tried having 2 different tanks on the job site and a truck driver filled a truck out of the off road tank and cost me 10 grand so from that day on I never bought red fuel, it can get complicated in some states where you have equipment and highway trucks on the same job.Texas is the only state I have seen that has off road fuel at a station I am sure there are others but most dyed fuel comes from a jobber and they are not going to sell you a few gallons at a time
FYI
By state the taxes as of MAY 2008.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/petroleum_marketing_monthly/current/pdf/enote.pdf (http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/petroleum_marketing_monthly/current/pdf/enote.pdf)
Skip
...and Washington still leads the way with gas/diesel average of 36 cents followed by Penn with gas/diesel average of 34.65 cents.
Kysteve forget about getting Federal taxes back on fuel Sean must have a loop hole he uses being a part time farmer I am very familiar with the form 4136 and it covers alternative fuels, farmers,trains,use in some intercity and local buses and for export you sign your life away with that form for a .243 rate so go with regular fuel and don't worry about it or use solar
I for one do not even know for sures if running Red in your DEDICATED APU tank is legal or not. May be, may not be. Depends upon if you are running the gen set rolling down a public road, or are 100% only using the apu off in the boonies somewhere. Me for one would rather NOT run that chance of getting checked (and caught) with ANY red fuel. The potential fines outway any potential savings. My two cents worth. :) :) :)
We run off-road in our separate generator/ProHeat tank. This tank is competely separate from our engine tank. I filled both tanks in South GA near Statesboro a couple days ago. 2 pumps side by side on the fuel island at the station. Off-road 3.999 per gallon and on-road was 4.289. Off road pump had the larger diameter "truck stop" nozzle. A friend who lives near the station said he has seen pick-ups lined up waiting at the off road pump. I will keep the off-road in my "off-road tank" for my generator/ProHeat.
We have ran a total of almost 7000 gallon of fuel in our bus in about 8 1/2 years. Had we always used off-road, we would have saved about $3000. One fine would have been more much more than that. It does not take having someone stick yourr tank, a leak or an accident that causes a fuel leak can also get you. Jack
When we were in Canada I notice about all Flying J had red fuel but I have never saw red fuel at one in the states anybody know if they have it here
Thanks for all the info guys,
Just to clarify things. I started this thread in part to help me decide some things on my electrical layout and in another part to decide whether or not to find a spot in the bus for the extra tank to fill to run the gen set. After all the great info here I have definitely aborted the whole ideal. I ain't much on saving pennies and nickles..........now dollars.....that is different.... Thanks again all for helping me get the cob webs out of my head. .......Steve.......
Quote from: makemineatwostroke on May 16, 2008, 02:04:05 PM
Kysteve forget about getting Federal taxes back on fuel Sean must have a loop hole he uses being a part time farmer I am very familiar with the form 4136 and it covers alternative fuels, farmers,trains,use in some intercity and local buses and for export you sign your life away with that form for a .243 rate so go with regular fuel and don't worry about it or use solar
It is not a "loophole".
Anyone can file this form, we file it every year. Anyone who uses clear diesel for off-road use and can document that use properly is entitled to the credit. At nearly a quarter a gallon, it adds up -- we're averaging about 400 gallons a year between generator and Webasto, or around $100 tax credit. If you feel the roughly five minutes it takes to fill this form out properly is not worth the money, that's your decision, but why try to dissuade others from using it?
You simply fill out line 3a of the form, which has a blank for "Type of use", in which you write "Generator" (or furnace, etc.). The lines you are talking about, lines 3b through 3e, deal with farms, trains, buses, and export, respectively. (All the lines other than 3 have to do with other fuels, such as gasoline, avgas, alternative fuels, etc. Ignore those -- line 3a is for non-road use of undyed diesel). Note that the record-keeping requirements of the form mandate that you keep (but not submit) all your fuel receipts.
Last year's (2007) form can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4136.pdf (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4136.pdf)
BTW, we have been audited by the IRS, and there were no audit comments on this deduction. Also, our taxes are prepared by a CPA, who would certainly not be filing this form if it was not (1) 100% legitimate and (2) worth her fees to file it. FWIW.
-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com
Quote from: Sean on May 16, 2008, 08:35:00 PM
You simply fill out line 3a of the form, which has a blank for "Type of use", in which you write "Generator" (or furnace, etc.). ..
I need to correct myself here (and really, this ought to be a clue that our accountant has been filling out this form for us for the last three years). In response to a number of reader questions, I posted an article on this subject on our blog,
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/06/fuel-tax-and-management.html (http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/06/fuel-tax-and-management.html)
In the course of researching my facts, I realized that what you need to put in column (a), "Type of Use," on Line 3(a) is simply the number "8," which comes from a table in the form's instructions ("diesel fuel ... used other than as a fuel in the propulsion engine of a ... diesel-powered highway vehicle").
Sorry for the misinformation.
-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com
According to the MDOT, in michigan it's legal to use off road fuel in a generator provided the tank is separate from the engine tanks. The difference, according to them is the road tax is to be paid on the fuel consumed by the vehicle engine but the generator is exempt from road tax because it's function is electrical generation, one side note according to the MDOT is that an adjustment to the regulations was enacted last October that removed the exemption for generators that would be used to charge the battery system of electric cars lol, so if your building a battery driven bus you'll still have to pay the road tax in michigan. Anyone know how many batteries that would take and wow, how big of an electric motor lol.
Quote from: cody on June 05, 2008, 06:19:41 AM
According to the MDOT, in michigan it's legal to use off road fuel in a generator provided the tank is separate from the engine tanks. The difference, according to them is the road tax is to be paid on the fuel consumed by the vehicle engine but the generator is exempt from road tax because it's function is electrical generation, one side note according to the MDOT is that an adjustment to the regulations was enacted last October that removed the exemption for generators that would be used to charge the battery system of electric cars lol, so if your building a battery driven bus you'll still have to pay the road tax in michigan. Anyone know how many batteries that would take and wow, how big of an electric motor lol.
I'm sure that somewhere, someone has invented a bus motor that will run on flash light batteries but the oil companies won't let him develop it.
In Canada...
http://www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2005/gas_tax-e.html
Quote from: cody on June 05, 2008, 06:19:41 AM
According to the MDOT, in michigan it's legal to use off road fuel in a generator provided the tank is separate from the engine tanks. The difference, according to them is the road tax is to be paid on the fuel consumed by the vehicle engine but the generator is exempt from road tax because it's function is electrical generation, one side note according to the MDOT is that an adjustment to the regulations was enacted last October that removed the exemption for generators that would be used to charge the battery system of electric cars lol, so if your building a battery driven bus you'll still have to pay the road tax in michigan. Anyone know how many batteries that would take and wow, how big of an electric motor lol.
If I read that right.....if a fellow were to make a deisel engine run an elecrical generator then it would be exempt from the road tax....the better question would be how big would an eletric generator need to be to run a bus! Like the locomotives do! ;D