New England B.S. Thread

Yeah, literally overnight! My local diesel shop went from $3.97 to $4.40 from yesterday to today...

 

I have a half tank now and usually wait to fill it until April or May when the heating season is over. But with how things are going I figured it was a good idea to top it off now. Saved me around $50!

 

I got heating oil late January at $3.59/gallon. I got it again last Friday and it was up to $3.99/gallon. Gas has gone up $0.10/gallon in five days.

 

As has been said, training is key. We love our invisible fence and will not have a dog with out it now. It’s great, just open the door, dog goes out. The biggest thing is making sure the battery in the collar is good. They have battery plans and if you use them, they send them so often, that if you change them every time it will always be fresh. I check the collar once a month or so. One of our dogs would show us the battery was weak, as he slowly expanded the boundary. What kills the battery is the dog constantly making it beep.

below freezing Labor Day? I know it drops into the low 40s at times, but never experienced freezing that time of year. That’s crop killing temps.

I tried to order from one place, they said 2 to 10 days and the price is the day of delivery price. I told them no way in hell, in 10 days that could be another buck a gallon. So, I found another place, but wasn’t able to order till this evening, it went up over 20 cents today. Insert political bitching here.

We do the same, I get a small fill as late into the spring/summer as possible, then fill it mid September or so. Our primary heat source is a pellet stove, and even the pellets are climbing. I think I paid about 20 bucks more for a ton the other day than I did for good pellets back in November. Hope this shit changes soon, our contract was negotiated before this inflation started, and it’s putting the squeeze on us.

 

I go through 3 ton of pellets per year so I don't use a lot of oil fortunately. I paid $320/gal for Vermont Wood Pellets this fall. They are excellent, very little ash and never any clinkers.

My contract is up for renewal in a few months. I think I have some good ammo for something better than the standard 2% increase.

 

Yeah. Back in 2012 it got really warm on saint Patrick's day weekend which was fantastic as a college student but destroyed apple crops.

We woke up to 31 degrees but it warmed up quick. Definitely a kick in the pants that winter was coming. Maybe that's why this winter has felt so long.

 

$320/gal? You buy your pellets in gallons? Or 320 per ton?

 

Cumbys Gas went up .12 overnight while I was at work, 22 cents since my drive home yesterday morning. $65 to fill my little truck.

 

I'm trying to trick myself and fill up when I'm still at 3/4 or 1/2 a tank so the bottom line number isn't too large. Otherwise, I'm confidently in triple digits to fill my tank at this point. If I'm really close to empty, I'm pushing $150 to fill

 

I put some oil in the tank at the beginning of February for $3.60/gal and now they are pushing $4.20/gal (last year at this time I paid $2.49/gal). Currently ripping pellets to try and keep the oil usage down, but the quality this year has been awful - moisture in the bags and a lot more clinkers and soot (lets play the blame COVID game for quality issues). Hoping we get a warm up that stays around longer than two days.

I really do not want to top off the oil tank at the prices they are asking (sitting at half a tank and have the thermostat set lower than usual), but with the way things are looking, I do not see prices easing up at all during the summer. Ideally we fill up in July with the lower summer prices to start the winter off on a full tank, but may be switching back to buying a few tons of pellets instead. Ran the numbers a while ago and found with pellets around $300/ton, oil needs to be at or under $3.10/gal to break even on cost (doesn't factor in the maintenance and effort of running the pellet stove).

Should just move to Florida and not worry about it at this point.

 

You pay less in heat BUT you have to live in Florida.

I am fortunate I live near Seekonk. I don't know why or how, but Seekonk is always significantly cheaper than the rest of Mass and RI, we're sitting at about 3.50 right now (no joke intended). I'm sure that will go up, too, but still most of the rest I'm seeing is up around 4ish.

I'm considering a Nissan leaf. My new job starts soon, and my commute is even less. So much so that the truck won't warm up, not even close, during the commute. Rather than run it without getting up to temp constantly, just grab a cheapo electric car. Found a few Leafs for 5-7k ish, so might grab one of them. 50 mile range, good enough for a 1.2 mile commute

 

Thinking of just sending the kiddos to daycare in their modified power wheels. They know how to get there and back…

 

e-bike? Scooter? 1-wheel?

 

Anyone know of some aftermarket (preferably bronze) wheels.. My 16 year old Tacoma wheels that have been plagued with corrosion since I put them on my 4Runner YEARS ago, are causing me to lose 30-40psi per tire weekly........ And this is after I resealed them. It's time for some new wheels at a very affordable price because I am le broke. Who knew building a rear-linked rock crawler would be expensive

 

A.. friend... of mine.. uses off road diesel and puts used diesel oil in it to make it black..

 

yeah... I have these pesky emissions things on my truck that wouldn't play well with those things.

 

I will probably ride my bike when it's nice enough out, that's easy too, but when it's raining or cold or like 95° in the morning and I'd be a sweat bucket in just that mile ride, car would be nice to have. I will wait a bit, see how the truck does for a bit and how the weather allows me to ride or not to ride. If I can ride 95% of the time, F It, but if it's like a 50/50 shot, I'll probably grab a leaf.

Riding a moped or scooter around East Providence is asking to be a human pancake. I fear for my life in my tacoma, let alone if I tried it on a scooter.

Unless you're commercial there's like a 0.000001% chance DOT will dip your tank. I think there's some detergents and such that diesel fuel has differently than heating oil, but doing it every other or something probably wouldn't hurt the engine.

But, it's illegal, so don't do that

 

It won't hurt the truck. If you read an Owner's manual for the old diesels, what's listed as 'acceptable fuel sources' is pretty impressive. It wasn't until the new high pressure systems came along that the fuel systems became delicate flowers. The old 7.3's would run off of used oil, tranny fluid, diesel, kerosene, if it even had a hint of oil, it would burn it. The red off road fuel is the same as the on road fuel, it's just tinted, it would run fine in a modern diesel but you're pretty screwed if you ever got caught or had to go for warranty work.

 

Oh, yeah the off road fuel is the same. Heating oil is red and I don't think is exactly the same.

Good point on warranty work, you'd need to burn through a few cycles of the "legal" stuff. I don't know much about diesels, they have a fuel filter? You'd probably have to change that out.

But yeah, the chance of an average joe getting their tank dipped is pretty low. Commercial is more likely but even then I haven't heard of it being done a lot.

 

I went by two Cumbyies in Walpole this morning. One was $3.98/gal, the other was $3.99/gal. Those were the regular price, the Smart Pay price was $0.10 less. They used to have really good gas prices, but that's changed a lot over the last year. The BJ's in Stoughton was $3.39/gal earlier this week, but I expect it's over $3.50 now.

During the winter I keep the gas tank at or above 1/2 just in case.