Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A fuel station's nightmare......

On Saturday I spoke with an old neighbor who has a new dodge ram gas truck. He said his truck is in the shop because it just quit running. He later released that he'd fueled up a few miles before. I asked if he could have got diesel by mistake.....he had the receipt, it was gasoline.

Fast forward to Monday....my ex wife was meeting me for our kids Dr's appointment and her newer subaru sounded like hell. My daughter and I left and the ex waved her arms at us as we passed....her car won't start.

She tells me she fueled up at the same station as my neighbor did....3 days later.....at a station that ALWAYS has at least 3 cars fueling minimum.

I gave her a ride after sniffing the tank.....sure enough diesel. She too had a receipt for regular gas.

I towed her car back to my shop and sure enough pulled about 14 gallons of diesel from the tank.

I can't imagine how many others there are. I saw LOTS of cars on the side of the road.

I called the company manager and told him about it. He said if they find fault, they will allow a claim. 3 hours later the station was taped off and closed.

My ex is looking at a couple hundred for the tow, a few hundred for the drain and flush. I can only imagine what some shops will be doing trying to get squared away. I just vacuumed the lines and tossed a fuel filter at it. I imagine some will be adding O2 sensors and computer time.....

Ouch.

Some mistakes cost more than others.





P

I think their worst nightmare would be the 24hourcampfire boomer clan descending upon them to ask about the "twitters" and ramble on about Qanon.......phuggin scary schiet right there

I might,
maybe once,
have stuck my hose on the gashole instead of the fuel hole.

Jerked the lever, figured it out almost immediately.
Immediately, once the gas starts running it runs about 300 gallons per minute.
I put about 200 gallon in the wrong hole.

No big deal back then, mixed with 8000 gallons of the right stuff.


Couple weeks ago a guy pumped several hundred gallons of off-road into
a station's grease(food service) trap. Not sure what that cleanup entailed.

Filling a grease trap sounds like an epa nightmare.....

Working at an AMOCO in the late eighties on a snowy January night, the tanker driver walked in with his tank fill receipt as was common practice, and said to me "I just pumped 10,000 gallons of Silver into your diesel tank"
I had an Olds diesel Cadillac Fleetwood at the #2 pump while all this was going on. I went out and smelled the end of the diesel nozzle, and sure enough.....it smelled like gasoline. AMOCO pumped it out the next day, and we never heard from the guy with the Caddy.

I think we made a small fortune servicing those 350 Olds diesels. Vacuum pumps failed regularly.

Its better to put diesel in a gasoline motor than gasoline in a diesel motor. Ask me how I know this haha.

When I was working as a warranty claim inspector I got flown from middle Tennessee to Spokane Washington to investigate a misfueling claim against a truck stop. A brand new midsized Freightliner truck that was being ferried back to the selling dealer for delivery to the customer after having a beer body installed on it got about 90 gallons of gasoline pumped into the fuel tank. They made it about 5 miles before the engine hand-grenaded. Nothing like trashing a $35K engine before it got delivered to the original purchaser!

I've had my fair share of wrongful fills during my time as a master tech, usually gas in diesels. Of course they would always top off which made dropping the tank more fun 😒

I once had 2 pull the tank from the same church van twice in a month. Pull tank, drain, clean, replace filter, drain pump and bleed lines. Stupid costs money.

Ironically this happened in spokane too.

The dealership was in Spokane- - - -the misfueling happened in Wyoming, and the truck was towed back to the dealer after the engine blew.

That's happened around here a couple of times lately. A very expensive mistake.

Filling gas cans for my boat, I decided to top off my tank too. TDI Jetta 5 speed. Thank goodness the tank was almost full already! Backed up and filled it to the cap with diesel. Best mileage I ever saw.

When I was still working in the Forklift industry our salesman filled his diesel pickup with gas and made it a couple miles down the road and he said the pickup bucked and died. New engine fixed the problem. Last summer I was at a self serve diesel fill pump and filling my pickup and a gentleman pulls in and he is talking to his wife gets out and starts filling his Dodge with diesel and we talk about the weather and such when I notice that I don't see the cummins badge on the side of his pickup. I ask him if that pickup is a diesel and he responds with a strong yes and trails off to silence as he goes "No", this is my sons gas pickup. We pushed the pickup off the island and he was calling his son to come help him when I left.

Worked a gas station out of high school and a guy was fueling a very nicely restored Ford Hi-boy. When he came in I asked what diesel motor he had retrofitted in it. He looked at me and said that ain’t no diesel boy, that’s a built 460 big block. I said cool, but you just pumped 20 gallon of diesel in it.

He was pissed, and wanted to blame the store. I had to explain what the green handles on the pump meant.

Same thing happened here a few years ago. Driver put wrong fuel in wrong tank. My son's car had a belly full of diesel. The fuel company's insurance paid for the clean out.

Yet another feather in your cap.

LOL

This is why I always get the receipt!

Yeah an "attendant" pumped gasoline into my Dad's Maxima Diesel. He drove it around 10 miles. Had it towed to a Nissan dealer and had the tank and fuel lines drained. The Gas station got the bill.

Similar experience with Khanarella at a station except it was massive water in the gas.

Like 900 bucks to purge tank and fuel system and yank head of engine.
Another 400 for a vehicle rental.

Probably about 20 or 25 other customers at the station got water in their tanks also.
TN bureau of weights and measures contacted per complaint filed with the station.
The station was helpful in guiding customers thru it all.
Tanker from the distributor is what introduced the water and full reimbursement was paid by them for repairs..
Took about 3 weeks to get reimbursed..
Once I got the paperork from the station verified by the bureau of weights and measures.
The fuel distributor also reimbursed for the rental for a week also.
Insurance was a nothing burger with it all...

About a 1.75 gallons of water in her tank.
For that amount the stations underground tanks had to have had alot of water in em.
This all happened over a 6 hour period after a 5000 gal tanker resupplied them.



Giant logistical, coordination, and phone tag/ email PITA event..