Off road fuel????

[kysteve]

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..........

[luvrbus]

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

[busnut104]

Here in Pa you would save around 60 cents per gal.

[luvrbus]

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

[kysteve]

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??

[Tom Y]

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

[luvrbus]

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

[kysteve]

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.

[Jeremy]

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

[chazwood]

I think he is referring to using off road in his generator?

[Jeremy]

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

[Sean]

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

[Lee Bradley]

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.

[luvrbus]

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

[skipn]

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

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