Day 5: Riding In Cooking Oil Truck

Gas Prices Fuel Secrets Day 5 of Putting In In Park is riding in a truck that smells like fried chicken

by Tiffany Craig

Published: Thu, July 10, 2008 - 9:02 pm CST Last Updated: Thu, July 10, 2008 - 10:17 pm CST

On Day 5 of Putting It In Park, I'm riding in a truck fueled by cooking oil.

Mark Hendry owns a shop in Tillman's Corner called Southern Automotive. He also owns a vehicle that I have dubbed the "Chicken Truck."

My month of not buying gas wouldn't be complete without a ride with Mark.

Photographer Arnell Hamilton and I quickly discovered that it will cost only 42 cents for my seven miles! Yes!

His truck is huge and grabs attention. "This is an 02 Chevy 3500 Series Diesel Dually."

Loosely translated, it's a gas guzzler!

These days, Mark would pay up the 125 dollars in diesel fuel to fill up. After getting all the ingredients, Mark pays about 20 dollars to fill up at a pays what amounts to 81 cents per gallon.

Instead, he's using a cooking oil concoction that he learned on the Diesel Secret Energy website.

Mark says 85% of the mixture is cooking oil and the rest is a carefully blended mixture. "We use a small amount of kerosene, cetane and some other items to keep the cooking oil from solidifying. It's actually considered a high performance diesel fuel."

The tricky part is getting enough grease to get the job done.

Mark admits that if you bought gallons of cooking oil at the grocery store, it would cost a fortune. His suggestion is to call restaurants in your area and see if they will give it to you instead of throwing it out.

This alternative is ONLY for diesel vehicles! Mark tested out his first batch on a tractor to make sure it would work.

Mark likes to joke and invite people to sniff his tailpipe. It really does smell like fried chicken!!

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The wife Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Good recovery on that last near fall, Tiffany. Keep up the good work. You are doing a great job. As for using trees for steam, I am a slow learner, Carl. You would have to shimmy up that tree several hundred times showing me how to cut those limbs off. I would never be able to exceed your expertise.

carl Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm

I guess we need to check out steam next to see how efficient it would be. I got some trees I need to get rid of any way. Wonder how many trees it would take to get to Biloxi and back? Course I’d have to teach the wife how shinny up a tree and cut a good limb off when we needed more fuel.

BamaBob Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 4:44 pm

Well, it is clear Tiffany ain’t afraid of nuttin’ to stick her nose in the exhaust pipe of that big old truck! lol

DEW26M Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 4:32 pm

carl they used to have to pay to get rid of it, now it’s a HOT COMMODITY and is being stolen from hamburger shops and burger joints. There was just 5 incidents recently close to me where they drained the used oil overnight. The shop owners were highly upset, I forget how much he said it was worth, but it was in the thousands.

carl Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 9:42 am

That’s exactly what the kids thought. They could be houses down the street playing and hear the smoke detector go off and come a running to eat.

BamaBob Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 9:21 am

Yeah, when I was a young man married for the first time, she would call me at work and ask me what I wanted fried for dinner. For the longest time I thought the smoke detector was the dinner bell.

Now I just pass by a typical buffet filled with fried pork chops, country fried steak, fried okra, fried green beans, fried corn fritters and fried Twinkies, I can feel all the statins I take line up in my arteries with protest signs held high.

bada bing bada boom

carl Says:

Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 9:12 am

That’s for sure! I believe I could batter my shadow and deep fry it and still gain weight.