I thought I'd let you guys in on a nasty little surprise I was involved in over the weekend. I filled up my car at my usual gas station in Springfield, MO, started driving across the state to see my family, and noticed about halfway home that my car was acting funny. When I got home, the car died in the driveway. The mechanic who we took the car to told me it was filled with diesel.
Turns out, a local distribution center had a trucker dump diesel into a regular gas tank. That gas then got sent to an unknown amount of local gas stations. At least one other gas station besides the one I used were confirmed to have the contaminated gas. Interestingly, the other gas station got the fuel at 7:30 am and shut the pumps down by 8:30. My gas station, however, was still pumping out diesel at 11:52.
Anywho, the gas station I fueled up at, Kum 'n' Go, is paying for repairs. So, if anyone in the Springfield area (or anywhere, in general) happens to end up with a load of diesel by accident, go back to your gas station and demand a compensation. I'm waiting on my check now.
Yikes! It's nice to know that not only does Kum 'N Go have the best name of any gas station we've ever seen, but that they own up to their mistakes, too.
(Photo: SA_Steve )
]]>Dr. Evil, I suppose burning a mix of diesel/gas in a gas-engined car doesn't do much good for the catalytic converter.
And you're right about the gas in a diesel - that's bad, very bad.
]]>You never want to snuggle {POUT}
]]>Diesel in a gasoline engine isn't as bad as Gasoline in a Diesel engine. Gassers might require a bit of labor flushing the lines and fuel rails, otherwise the Diesel won't do much harm past the fuel filter, FPR, and possibly the pump. Spark Plugs might get pretty fouled too, but those parts aren't too expensive other than the fuel pump. Just labor intensive.
Now on a Diesel engine you run into either the Injector pump gaulding a piston or fouling up a unit injector (depending on what type of Diesel vehicle you have.) Unit Injectors on my Powerstroke are $250/ea remanufactured. That's $2000 + Labor + whatever other parts the gasoline ruined.
]]>I filled up my tank with reg gas and by the time I got home, about 10 minutes, my car just died. Let it rest on the side of the road all night and it turned back on in the morning. Thankfully mine just had water in it and not anything else.
And yes, I do call them Ejaculate and Evacuate. And have not been to another one since.
]]>Oh crap, which one is it? I'm in Springfield right now and I need gas today!!!
Maybe I'll go to Conoco instead. :P
]]>/cheap double entendre
]]>@WriterWriter: Someone with internet access, tv, radio, magazines, etc., etc., etc. IN other words very naive.
Do they have a branded credit card I can sign up for????
]]>@PunditGuy: If I still had my facebook page, that would soooo be going on it.
]]>Where is this gas station based? Suffragette City?
Wham bam, thank you ma'am :P
]]>I live in Iowa (where Kum & Go is headquartered) and I've always thought it to be an unfortunate name too. In their defense, they tend to be a lot cleaner than your average Citgo... ;-)
]]>Gross!
]]>I think friendlynerd meant have incompatible nozzles on the pump and the vehicle. So if I drive up to a diesel pump in my non-diesel car, the nozzle just wouldn't fit into the gas receptacle in my car. Same for a regular gas pump and a diesel vehicle's gas receptacle.
]]>The hoses and other equipment to drop fuel into the tanks is fairly uniform. I guess you could have a seperate system for diesel, but these types of accidents are rare. Plus, it would just be plain inefficient from a logistical standpoint.
If you had dedicated equipment for Diesel/Unleaded, then you couldn't for instance ship as much unleaded if the trailer had a Diesel compartment or send the truck who just did a regular gas station to a trucking company.
It's easier than you think. Most places have what's called a Veeder Root system which tracks fuel & potential water levels.
When I worked, most of the time we just threw the piece of paper the computer printed after each delivery into the paperwork bin and did not even scrutinize the actual delivery vs. which grade the bill of lading said we ordered.
Plus, if it wasn't a 24 hour location, the fuel could have been delivered at 3AM and you woldn't notice the problem until it was too late and people started putting the mixed fuel in their cars.
]]>What would the engine sound like? If caught early enough is it as simple as a fuel purge and injector cleaning?
]]>Ogod what a name. Giggling like a little girl after hearing a filthy joke here.
Also the jokes holys... Got a good laugh and saved my day.
]]>How bout hump, I mean, pump and leave?
]]>How is this the gas stations fault, the poster said the wrong "gold" was pumped at the "distribution center" not the gas station?
And since they were still pumping the bad stuff at 11:52, what does that make Kum 'N Go...stop and go? I smell bad gas!
]]>So the big compartment gets the unleaded, and the other ones are split by the dispatcher dependent on what the usual historic sales rates are for that station.
The truck has one big filler hose, and maybe a pump to empty a ground tank ( rare ). It is up to the driver to connect the hose to the correct valve fitting ... and which fitting that is will change as the dispatcher's order changes.
If a truck has, say a 1500 gallon compartment, a 2000 gallon compartment, and a 1000 gallon trailer ... if a dispatcher sends 1000 gallons of diesel to one store on one load, and then sends 1500 gallons of diesel to a different store, that hose is going to get fitted to the trailer at station one, and a main tank compartment at station two.
So ... putting different ends on the hoses for each compartment won't work, since there is no way to predict what product is carried in a given tank. They are all different sizes in order to give the dispatcher flexibility in customizing the load to a station.
]]>How do you drive home without realizing there is a huge ammount of smoke billowing from your car?
]]>@friendlynerd: As kbarrett pointed out, glow plugs are only used for starting. Also, the compression in diesel engines is much higher than in gasoline engines.
]]>Once the engine warms up, it's strictly compression-ingition only.
]]>@intellivised: The problem I've always had with the one in Laramie as well as all of the K&G in WY is that they all used to be 7-11s (which we don't have any of in the state anymore).
I guess in terms of convience store heirarchy I've always put the 7-11 at the top so I hardly ever visit K&G after the switch. Dirty, poorly stocked, bad fast food choices, never been a big fan.
]]>At least James had his car repaired by KumN' Go. This happened to me years ago to my taxi fleet - the cars ran like crap and the ones that got the highest concentration of contaminated fuel died of excess engine wear soon after. The station's response? Sorry, not our problem. If this town had had more than one fuel supplier at the time....
@Puck: Nice!
]]>I used to work at a gas station and this happened once or twice. Our delivery company dropped the wrong grade of UNL gas every once in a while too.
Another time at another location, the delivery guy didn't lock down the cap going into the underground tank and a bunch rainwater got into the fuel, damaging a few cars. That made the 10:00 news.
These truck drivers are human. They haul varying types of fuel to different locations, so it's not impossible to get a compartment mixed up or confuse an underground tank.
In this case, K&G will probably just pass the bill on to the distributor.
]]>@AngrySicilian: Mugs & Jugs in Cedar Rapids, IA.
]]>Holy noodling, Batman. What a name.
]]>Wait, that's not funny.
Oops! :-)
]]>Kum N' Go is so close to my house it's practically an extension of my kitchen when I feel the need to snack and I'm on good terms with the whole staff - and I've heard all sorts of even bawdier repalcements for the unfortunately named gas station. The one I've heard the most is "Pump N' Dump".
I recently went back to my hometown (near Detroit, MI) to play some shows with my old band and my Kum N' Go trucker hat got quite a response - I had several offers from people wanting to buy it.
]]>That has been my experience in Bloomington.
]]>@Puck: Hey but at least he finished!
]]>Good thing he didnt have to turn the other cheek.
]]>There is a station here that is named Pump & Munch. Ah... the double entendres!
]]>I like to refer to the stations around my house as "Jizz & Split"
]]>I don't believe diesel is burnable by a normal internal combustion engine. Most people don't even realize that diesel vehicles don't have spark plugs, their combustion comes purely from extreme compression and explosion of the diesel fuel.
]]>This happened in Des Moines, Iowa with QuickTrip. Tanker put diesl into the unleaded tank and about 6 cars died within 2 blocks of the station after filling up from empty tanks. They had the pumps shut off within 20 minutes of it happening and they all got reimbursed.
]]>Their tire air station is referred to as Blow-n-Go
]]>@Neophiliack: I've never heard of it before.
]]>Wow, and I thought "Sheetz" (In the northeast) was an unfortunate name.
]]>On our way from Kentucky to Texas, my husband and I drove through Missouri. We stopped in a Kum n' Go. We giggled. I bought a t-shirt. My husband actually wears it sometimes. Hilari-o.
]]>I thought I'd add that the manager at the gas station could not have been more helpful about the matter. It caught me off guard, what with all these horror stories Consumerist posts.
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