Mud Mechanik
Gold Member
Gosh, feel free to tell us more! Inquiring minds want to know. I read in the trade magazines that regular unleaded is sold at cost and the profit is made on the rest of the distillates. And what about the types of fuel oil, i.e., some posters here say ULSD is all that there is anymore but others claim they can get LSD for off-road use. Where is the lubricity added? At the refinery or further down the supply chain?
Finding out about fuel or gasoline is harder than it should be. It's not like it used to be when some retailers were claiming their gas would give you better mileage or 'clean' your engine.
I don't work in the marketing department so commenting on gasoline prices would be a guess on my part. ULSD is the standard fuel spec target, which means that it has to be less than 10 ppm sulfur, if for some reason the finished product tanks test higher than that, it is easier to "relax" the diesel processing units to let the sulfur creep up to convert the entire tank to 500ppm and sell it as LSD (died red), than to fire up the plant and lower the entire tank to less than 10. Since sulfur is the lubrication property of diesel, lubricity is added at the refinery and tested prior to leaving to ensure proper specs, lubricity is only added to ULSD.
I will answer any questions you may have about refining fuels, just point me down the road you want to go.