Diesel road check!!!

[Crankarm]

What a bout cooking oil? AFAIK You can use it providing you don't use more than £2,400 worth of fuel in a year on a personal/private mileage basis.

How bout if there are red diesel residues in the fuel tank/lines/filters/injectors due to a previous owner putting the illicit brew in the tank which haven't been washed through with normal diesel? Surely they would need to establish that it was you who had put the red diesel in the fuel tank.

 

[Gerry Attrick]

To be fair to HMRC, they are only enforcing the law as enacted by our wonderful poiliticians. If there is no exception built into law for snow clearing vehicles, then they have no choice but to take action.

'Tis democracy you understand.

 

[Piemaster]

We used to get stopped on a regular basis when i was truck driving and have our tanks dipped and when you consider that filling up a 44 tonner with long haul tanks on is costing over £1000 a time then running on red diesel is a very tempting prospect

Simon

Pfffft. The engines in the company vehicle I'm now on are consuming the red stuff at around 1000 litres per hour.
(It is a 6000 tonne ship though)

Incidentally the 'red' diesel we used to take onboard in Norway was actually dyed green.

 

[Brains]

Pfffft. The engines in the company vehicle I'm now on are consuming the red stuff at around 1000 litres per hour.
(It is a 6000 tonne ship though)

Incidentally the 'red' diesel we used to take onboard in Norway was actually dyed green.

You're burning MDO in the M/E ?
What's the ship ? a RoRo ?,
Is that the low grade sulphur stuff for inshore manouvering ?
14.5k at 24MDO sounds like a nasty consumption to me, must be costing someone a fortune

We run our ships on the normal Bunker C, 380CST filthy stuff at half the price.

 

[661-Pete]

To be fair to HMRC, they are only enforcing the law as enacted by our wonderful poiliticians. If there is no exception built into law for snow clearing vehicles, then they have no choice but to take action.

'Tis democracy you understand.

I wonder. The law is written down in statute, but the Courts have to apply it. Would

a) purposes relating to agriculture, horticulture or forestry,

include "clearing snow from a road in order that the tractor can gain access to land for purposes relating to agriculture etc." If the tractor driver, by assisting in this primarily selfish task, altruistically helps other road users to access the road, so what then?

 

[661-Pete]

We run our ships on the normal Bunker C, 380CST filthy stuff at half the price.

In France, for home heating, we bought a small amount of red diesel at the garage, and burnt it for a short while until the boiler broke down (and is yet to be repaired). Certainly it looked and smelt like diesel, and it was certainly coloured red. It was called "fioul" (think: "fuel" as a Frenchman would pronounce it ). Maybe we could have got something cheaper, similar to what you describe, but only in much larger amounts. If we ever get around to fixing the boiler, we'll look into this.

 

[Norm]

Reputedly, if youve had red diesel in at some stage, they can detect it even if you're running on the correct fuel now. (fuel filters possibly).

My understanding is that, if they are only dipping the tank, it's a very brief visual check. It only takes a couple of refills (if you run the tank fairly low) and the colour is pretty much gone. If they look have suspicions and look closer, though, to the extent of a basic strip-down, the red colour can stain engine components and be picked up much later.

 

[Apeman]

Fuel checks here are quite common and often or not a few cars are confiscated. There is no right of appeal with heavy fines and the car crushed. Quite understandable when there is a large black market for hookey fuel in this part of the world. I was stopped at such a checkpoint on my bike and I asked the cop did he want to dip my water bottle. At least I got a laugh out of him!

 

[Piemaster]

You're burning MDO in the M/E ?
What's the ship ? a RoRo ?,
Is that the low grade sulphur stuff for inshore manouvering ?
14.5k at 24MDO sounds like a nasty consumption to me, must be costing someone a fortune

We run our ships on the normal Bunker C, 380CST filthy stuff at half the price.

Supply boat in north sea. All the rigs use ULSD (ultra-low sulphur fuel) as well, and have been for several years now. The c/o for the supply boats from MDO happened a bit later.
1m3/hour is maybe a bit over what we were burning, more like 20 / day. It is exceptional as it was a 'go as fast as you can' run ( its around a 110 mile run). as opposed to a more usual economical 12/day. Pushing what amounts to a house brick around at a (relative) high speed is never going to be very economical, but the primary purpose is working alongside a rig not getting from A-B as cheaply as possible.
Incidentally this boat was built to use IFO but as far as I know only did so once and then only for the runs from port to the rigs, MDO at other times.

MARPOL may yet have a big effect on what all boats use.
And if you think 24/day is a lot you would be really impressed with the big anchor handling ships using twice that to tow rigs about.

 

[John the Monkey]

Quite understandable when there is a large black market for hookey fuel in this part of the world.

IIRC, there were problems with diesel being stolen from farms in England last year (merited a couple of pieces on Farming Today, as I recall).

Not sure why there's so much bad reaction to this earlier in the thread, why should people be able to cheat their way out of paying tax?