|
|
Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 00:11:35 :
In Reply to: Re: Both $2.59 here posted by Mr.PG on Monday, July 13, 2009 at 19:39:39 :
If I was near you, I'd take that Rotella, let it settle, and burn it in my trucks. I'm not the most devout environmentalist out there, but burning it in a burn barrel seems excessively polluting to me. I often mix it with sawdust and burn it in my wood stove. That's kind of iffy because if it gets going to furiously it'll light the stove up bright red, and at that point if I choke the air down it smokes and cruds up the chimney. But a trowel-full at a time thrown occasionally onto a wood fire doesn't smoke at all and it peps up the fire. Burning on a slash pile doesn't make much smoke because it has plenty of air and soon gets going pretty enthusiastically.
A diesel engine will actually burn lube oil straight, to some extent. I read a story about a trucker who ran out of fuel out in the Sahara desert somewhere, and got himself to civilization by draining most of the crankcase oil out and pouring it in his fuel tank.
Not sure how much oil the big rigs use. My M35s take 5 gallons, which is an expensive enough oil change.
I'm surprised as big an outfit as Swift doesn't do anything to clean up their oil before they pour it in the fuel. I'm sure they change the oil often enough that it's not too sludgy, and the trucks run steady enough that there's no water in the oil (most of the water in my waste oil bucket probably comes from gear oil), but still it seems like they should at least let the sludge and the larger metal shavings settle out. I'd be curious to know what they do with their gear oil.