[The Champ]

A number of years ago, my ACDelco trainer told me about a test done on E10 fuels around the country. They compared Top Tier fuels to off brand fuels.

The Top Tier fuels all had 10% or less of ethanol. The off brand fuels in some cases had 20% or more of ethanol. Ethanol can be purchased separately for less than E10. I don't think any refinery would send out fuel with 20+ % of ethanol as E10, so one could validly assume that the off brand stations were doing their own 'mixology'.

It's for this reason I choose to only buy Top Tier fuel or fuel from a known reliable source.

[Sirrotica]

The blending is done at time it's loaded into the tanker, no one is blending fuel in service stations. When the tanker driver loads the fuel, we could see what component was being blended, and if the specific gravity was needed to be less, more ethanol was put into the mix, have I seen it more than 10%, yes I have. I've also seen it at much less than 10%, it gets adjusted to fall within the weight parameters for that blend of fuel.

Ethanol is subsidized by tax dollars, so it is definitely cheaper to blend than oil hydrocarbons are.

You have to have been around blend racks and refineries to actually see how it's done, talk to the operators that actually oversee the blending to know what takes place.

There's not enough money in fuel profits for service station owners to be doctoring the fuel after it's in the ground. You can't buy each component in bulk separately, so it isn't feasible to mix anything at the point of sale.

There are no real checks and balances to know what ends up in the tanks at your local gas station, you're at the mercy of the oil companies. Is the octane correct, is the ethanol concentration under 10%? Did the detergent get added to each and every batch of fuel, is the additive tank empty or contaminated, who knows?

From my perspective of leasing a service station for 5 years as well as driving a fuel tanker for 4 years, this is all information I sought out about fuels I was retailing to the public, as well as distributing to fuel retailers. You wouldn't find much of the information on the internet, as most people have little actual knowledge of what goes on with fuel blending. I don't profess to be an expert at this subject, but likely have more practical information than many people do.

Top Tier fuels are sanctioned by auto manufacturers, did they actually test random batches, or did they take the oil companies word for it? Having inquired about laboratory analyzation of fuels before, the process is expensive. I was interested if the fuel I bought for my service station met minimum octane requirements after blowing a hole in a piston. That was the crap fuel that came from the crap refinery I posted about earlier.

BTW all the top tier fuels in and around central Ohio are sold under Shell, Marathon, and Sunoco, I've pulled every one of those brands and dropped them at generic stations as well as non branded convenience stores, and branded dealers, so what's top tier, and what isn't? They come from the same source no matter who is retailing them, After my dealings with oil companies over the years I don't believe anything they say, I take as much stock in what an oil company says as a used car salesman. The information I have came from people that actually operated the equipment at these facilities, not salespeople or company executives.

That's the information I have, you can believe whatever you'd like, or disregard every bit of it, makes no difference to me. I have zero incentive to embellish anything I've posted.