For most of my life Diesel cost less than Gasoline, but now

Diesel has been higher than gas for at least the last 7 yrs. Maybe longer? Correct? Did you just notice?

Diesel has more btu's per gallon. This is the reason it is higher cost.

Refineries concentrate on producing petroleum products based on demand...as they cant make them all at once. .This has created a manufactured " low supply " of deisel.
Typically before winters..as refineries have geared up fuel oil productions..we generally see lowrt deisel prices.
Federal exise taxes are considerably higher on diesel too...
And being "cheaper to make than gas" (because its less refined) is no longer the case.
Fed regs mandating lower sulfur contents have forced refineries to spend billions on upgrading existing equiptment...
The good ol days are long gone

Drove past a station this morning, diesel was $3.91 and Off-Road (#2) was $3.71. Glad I heat with coal.

Not bad for a WASTE byproduct of oil refinement. Talk about turning a pig into a sow's ear...........

Saw 4.39 diesel on the hiway today

Cap wrote:Diesel has been higher than gas for at least the last 7 yrs. Maybe longer? Correct? Did you just notice?

Diesel has more btu's per gallon. This is the reason it is higher cost.

^^^^THIS IS EXACTLY WHY^^^^^
"Energy companys" are charging the consumer by BTU's. They no longer charge to make a profit on thier product, they charge by how much Energy each product contains.

Diesel fuel also has a higher road tax here in PA. This is part of what you see at the pump.
Home Heating oil is now Ultra low sulfur here in thestates also. From what I understand Low sulfur diesel fuel is no longer produced.

All I know is I finally was financially able to buy a new truck. NICE Duramax diesel crew cab. HD2500. Pretty sweet truck! Rolled coal like nobody's business. Crap, it got to be so expensive to put diesel in that it went down the road with a young friend of mine. $100 every other day. He calls every now and then to complain how he doesn't have money anymore. Wasn't getting better mileage. Back to the old chevy 2500 with a gas 5.7L. That's one extreme, on the other side, the VW TDI is getting close to 48 MPG. Sort of cool to put $20 in and drive all over the place for the week. What I noticed here in N.Y. is that the diesel used to have a "cetane rating" of 44. Then it went to 42, now its 40. I used to get way better mileage with the higher cetane. Yep, garbage fuel for increased cost.

Scottscoaled wrote:All I know is I finally was financially able to buy a new truck. NICE Duramax diesel crew cab. HD2500. Pretty sweet truck! Rolled coal like nobody's business. Crap, it got to be so expensive to put diesel in that it went down the road with a young friend of mine. $100 every other day. He calls every now and then to complain how he doesn't have money anymore. Wasn't getting better mileage. Back to the old chevy 2500 with a gas 5.7L. That's one extreme, on the other side, the VW TDI is getting close to 48 MPG. Sort of cool to put $20 in and drive all over the place for the week. What I noticed here in N.Y. is that the diesel used to have a "cetane rating" of 44. Then it went to 42, now its 40. I used to get way better mileage with the higher cetane. Yep, garbage fuel for increased cost.

I have a Ram 2500 w Cummins diesel and a VW TDI . The dodge gets about 23 empty and 16 loaded with trailer. I rarely drive it if it is empty though. The VW I get 44 winter and 50-52 summer. It gets lousy when I stick a 1500lb trailer behind it, it drops to a measly 35.

Hmmmm. Maybe it could be that the Chinese want to be warm for a change. Back in the 70's when Nixon opened up China, my wife and I hosted a Chinese professor who was on exchange with our local college. I asked him what he was going to miss when he returned home. His answer, hot water and a telephone. A comment was made, that if China ever westernizes, there will not be enough resources in the world to support them. Looks like were there.

A rule of thumb that I've heard is that all other things being as equal as they generally can be (given the inherent design engineering differences), a Diesel model will on average get 30-35% better fuel economy than its closest match gasoline model. There is still 10-15% to be saved on fuel cost, even if Diesel is 20% more costly.

Scottscoaled wrote:All I know is I finally was financially able to buy a new truck. NICE Duramax diesel crew cab. HD2500. Pretty sweet truck! Rolled coal like nobody's business. Crap, it got to be so expensive to put diesel in that it went down the road with a young friend of mine. $100 every other day. He calls every now and then to complain how he doesn't have money anymore. Wasn't getting better mileage. Back to the old chevy 2500 with a gas 5.7L. That's one extreme, on the other side, the VW TDI is getting close to 48 MPG. Sort of cool to put $20 in and drive all over the place for the week. What I noticed here in N.Y. is that the diesel used to have a "cetane rating" of 44. Then it went to 42, now its 40. I used to get way better mileage with the higher cetane. Yep, garbage fuel for increased cost.

Should have kept the Dmax and bought a throw away commuter car. That's what I did.
I ended up with a Chevy Cruze ECO, stick shift for my boring drive to work. Getting 45mpg as a lifetime average for the past 53k miles. I drive the truck on the weekends and for utility purposes.

lsayre wrote:A rule of thumb that I've heard is that all other things being as equal as they generally can be (given the inherent design engineering differences), a Diesel model will on average get 30-35% better fuel economy than its closest match gasoline model. There is still 10-15% to be saved on fuel cost, even if Diesel is 20% more costly.

IMO, it seems like the way these current diesels are set up from the factory, they sacrifice MPG to meet EPA emissions regs. I used to have an old '85 Chevy 3/4 ton with the 6.2 diesel. It certainly wasn't the cleanest running engine there ever was, but I could get into the lower 20's MPG with little effort. These new diesels won't get that without a tune.

Wanna Bee wrote:Should have kept the Dmax and bought a throw away commuter car. That's what I did.
I ended up with a Chevy Cruze ECO, stick shift for my boring drive to work. Getting 45mpg as a lifetime average for the past 53k miles. I drive the truck on the weekends and for utility purposes.

I hear you there. I have the 2500HD, a 1971 Buick Skylark with a 455, a Hayabusa and a DR650. I drive the truck when I need a truck, and the others when I want to have fun. No point wearing them out for the daily grind, getting them covered in salt during the winter, sucking down all that gas, and shipping my hard earned $$ to the middle east!

In the past 365 days, I've driven a combined 24,304 miles. 20,770 in the Prius and 3,534 on the others. 790.93 gallons, for a fleet average of 31 MPG

LDPosse wrote:
I hear you there. I have the 2500HD, a 1971 Buick Skylark with a 455, a Hayabusa and a DR650. I drive the truck when I need a truck, and the others when I want to have fun. No point wearing them out for the daily grind, getting them covered in salt during the winter, sucking down all that gas, and shipping my hard earned $$ to the middle east!

In the past 365 days, I've driven a combined 24,304 miles. 20,770 in the Prius and 3,534 on the others. 790.93 gallons, for a fleet average of 31 MPG

Yep, just looked at the inspection sticker on the truck. I drove 1,140 miles in it this year
I also put 14k miles on a ZX6R this year and 52k on the new car.

Id never be able to afford to put fuel in the truck for all of those miles.

Wanna Bee wrote:...I also put 14k miles on a ZX6R this year...

14k on a ZX6R in one year?! I've done 10k in a year on the 'busa, only put about 1k on each of the past 2 years tho.

Flyer5 wrote: I have a Ram 2500 w Cummins diesel and a VW TDI . The dodge gets about 23 empty and 16 loaded with trailer. I rarely drive it if it is empty though. The VW I get 44 winter and 50-52 summer. It gets lousy when I stick a 1500lb trailer behind it, it drops to a measly 35.

Hey Flyer...I have an 06 Jetta TDI...bought it New...first thing I did was to buy an "Atkinson Smart Box"
It's basically plug and play ...it installs under the hood and changes the stock chips algorithms..
Bottom line is 40 more HP AND better mpg! In the Summer on a 25 mile stretch of hw I get 60 mpg!
It loves doing 85. ... kind of a sweet spot..And it still gets 55 mpg