Red farm grade, off road, high sulfer what ever ya call it

BS! Last year after Hurricane Katrina hit there was a big fuel shortage here in Louisiana so the groverment for a short time allowed station to sell red diesel (aka. offroad diesel). Never had any problems with it. The reason your dealer thinks you should not use it because it has more sulfur than onroad diesel and it may interfere with sensors.

Speaking as one who was raised on a farm...

The red diesel has less tax associated with it, here anyway, and is only supposed to be used by farmers when in the endeavor of producing food for your table. If the farmer has a diesel car, it is illegal to use this red diesel because the government is not extracting the taxes to which they have become accustomed from this fuel up. It is also illegal to use this diesel in a pickup when the farmer is not headed for town on business.

Or at least that was the case a few years ago.

H.

It is also used as heating oil which is not taxed.

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

"Big gus" snipped-for-privacy@nortell.com wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

The crime is TAX evasion, and the federal government takes it very seriously. It is very common for them to dip-check pickup trucks at auctions in the mid-west.

Couldn't have said this better myself, so I am copying it from another source:

The people you have to worry about when running dyed fuel on the highway is the IRS. They're the ones who typically decide where to set up a checkpoint, and the state and local law enforcement people just assist them with the operation.

They don't look in your tank. They pull a sample and check for the presence of dye. The test they use is sensitive enough that you may have run several hundred gallons of undyed fuel thru the system since you last used dyed, but it will still pick up traces of the dye and they've gotcha.

Right now a person is better off to buy highway diesel than dyed fuel even for off road use. Why? The typical oil distributor learns from his supplier and gouges on prices for dyed fuel. You buy the highway fuel, currently about 10 cents more than dyed, BUT, you file for a refund of the state road tax since you're using it off road. We did that for years with our cranes because NC says they're off road equipment even though they were tagged and run on the highway. You run the highway fuel because the Feds say anything on a road must run taxed fuel, but the state rebates their part of the tax back to you when you file for the refund. We switched to highway fuel after we got caught with dyed fuel at a checkpoint run by the IRS. They were prepared to fine us in the neighborhood of $30K, but we had a letter from the state saying it was permissible to run dyed fuel in off road equipment that travels on the highway from one site to another, such as mobile cranes. The guy from the IRS was decent about it, and explained that the Federal regulations required taxed fuel in ANYTHING traveling on the highway. He did not levy the fine although he could have. In our conversation with him, he told us something that was sorta interesting. He works all over NC doing the fuel checks, and he said here in the mountains you'd catch a lot of pickups running dyed fuel, but few larger trucks. OTOH, in the eastern part of the state he said you hardly ever caught anyone running it in a pickup but plenty of larger trucks tried it.

If it was really worthwhile to run dyed fuel, the simplest thing would be to let the vehicle tank (on a pickup for instance) be filled with highway fuel, but pipe the engine supply from one of the off-road tanks you often see in the bed of pickups. They don't check to see where the fuel lines are hooked up, so you could get away with that. Right now though, dyed #2 is about $2.90 + 7% sales tax here, and highway fuel is about $3.09, so there's no savings to be had anyway. Depending on price swings, highway fuel is cheaper than dyed at times, even though its price includes close to 30 cents in NC road tax that's not on the dyed fuel.

Oh, and in some areas the only difference between the two (besides the tax) is the red dye. That particular distributor simply dyes the off-road/non taxed fuel, and doesn't dye the over the road/highway taxed fuel, all the exact same fuel before it is dyed...

Some places even sell un-dyed off road fuel, because they only have one tank, but use an on road pump with tax and an off road pump without tax to pump from it. But that is another story. :-0

This makes no sense. What if you used the truck off-road for a while, using off road fuel, then bought on-road fuel to drive on road. You've complied with the letter of the law. The presence of dye residue is of no consequence.

CJB

Since when do you expect the federal government let alone the IRS to make sense? This is true, we had a guy right on the highway here have an accident, his fuel tank was ruptured, the state police officer who responded could obviously see the red OFF road fuel, he ended up paying their fine.

Besides it makes more sense than many things they do. Any vehicle LICENSED as an on/over the road vehicle, MUST pay fuel tax, no matter where you use it. The vehicles that legally qualify to use off road tax free fuel are not street licensed pickup trucks.

More information about cheating the tax man.

Any use of dyed diesel fuel or dyed kerosene. In fact, you may be subject to a substantial penalty if you use dyed fuel as a fuel in a registered diesel-powered highway vehicle

Motor vehicle. For the purpose of applying the tax on the delivery of special motor fuels, motor vehicles include all types of vehicles, whether or not registered (or required to be registered) for highway use, that have both the following characteristics. a.. They are propelled by a motor.

b.. They are designed for carrying or towing loads from one place to another, regardless of the type of material or load carried or towed.

Motor vehicles do not include any vehicle that moves exclusively on rails, or any of the following items: farm tractors, trench diggers, power shovels, bulldozers, road graders, road rollers, and similar equipment that does not carry or tow a load.

Dyed Diesel Fuel Penalty Waived in Florida Due to Hurricane Wilma Don't get caught in the red Agencies checking for dyed diesel fuel (July

1995)

Don't get caught with the wrong colored diesel fuel. Red dye is added to tax exempt fuel at the refinery or terminal to make it traceable. Fuel taxed for use on roads is clear or has a yellowish tint. If an inspection of the fuel tanks on a vehicle used on the roads of this state reveals a different color, samples of the suspect fuel are sent to a laboratory for analysis. Truckers with colored diesel fuel are subject to fines.

Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) and Internal Revenue Service officials have recently set up operations to test the fuel in the tanks of trucks traveling Louisiana highways. The Department of Revenue and Taxation is cooperating

with the IRS and DOTD in cracking down on fuel tax evaders. Those drivers caught using exempt fuel on the road will be required to pay the taxes due, and will be subject to fines of $1000, or $10 per gallon of improperly used fuel, whichever amount is greater. Repeat violations bring higher fines.

Since it is illegal both to use the taxexempt fuel on the road, or to hold it or sell it for on-the-road use, the owner of a tank containing fuel to be used illegally is also subject to penalties.

The dyed-fuel inspection program is one of many joint Federal-State compliance projects currently in progress.

The average fine for using Red-dye fuel on the road is over $10,000.00. It is a Federal IRS violation. Get caught twice--Over $50K! It Will NOT flush out of the system. I used to catch these guys all the time!

It is supposed to be higher sulphur, but with supply and demand, according to the guys that make it and the guys that haul or load it, most is low sulphur with dye added. I think most diesel gurus say your truck will run better with the higher sulphur. Maybe it has a higher cetane number, I know biodiesel does. I never noticed any mileage decrease but, if there was it was way more than offset by the cost. There is a steep fine if you get caught. Rumors say farm tags are good to have if you are running it, because it is an off-road fuel. Farmers and ranchers, drilling rigs and other oilfield related machinery may use it because they are not highway driven vehicles. If you use your vehicle on the road you must pay road tax on your fuel and that is the difference between red and clear and there used to be a blue or something that was low tax for certain things.

Your confusing playing in the mud with off road use. Off road vehicles are farm tractors, harvesters, bull dozers, graders and other construction and logging equipment, boats, etc. If its got a tag on it for highway use, its not an off road vehicle. If you have a water truck for wetting down roads under construction and its trailered between sites, its eligible, if its got a tag and is driven its not. And the dye presence doesn't stays as long as one reader suggested, Diesel does have solvent properties. And red fuel has been approved for general use in emergencies in the past, such as in the gulf coast areas hit by hurricanes last years.

Whitelightning

When they say off-road, they generally mean unlicensed and in the endeavor of some industrial type of activity. They are not talking about a licensed vehicle that is taken out to get muddy every few weekends. That guy still gets to pay for the tax.

H.

WOW

this answered my question

I did not intend this to stir a big TAX discussion,

I was wondering how many people actually did it and if there was any problems

I have run a few tanks through and so far the truck runs better on the red, then the clear.

Another reason why I was asking is, diesel is 3.09 a gallon here and the "red stuff" is 2.29 a gallon

a considerable savings.

I have a large tank in my yard and the local fuel depot delivers for free.

Thanks

A guy that had an excavating company here got caught using it in his dump trucks. Lost his business and home. From what I read in the newspaper a cop at the dump saw the red dye in the exhaust pipe of one of the trucks and they checked them all. Can you really see it in the exhaust pipe or was that BS?

Al

BS

Whitelightning

I'd have to go along with the BS Contingent. Diesel engines burn a lot hotter than gasoline, and with gasoline all you get is water vapour dripping off the exhaust. No diesel engine operating with enough efficiency to move a truck should have dye getting through to the exhaust.

H.

Could have very easily seen it in a fuel leak or in on or around the fuel tank...

Might be a moot point on the "2007 and beyond" diesels, I'm guessing that red fuel will screw up the emission controls.