By DEAN BILLING.
When I received this link to an article about “Refurbishing A Fuel Truck” by EAA Chapter 725 over at Grants Pass Airport (3S8) in Oregon, my immediate reaction was: “There’s an untold story here.” My curiosity was primary piqued because the story implies that Grants Pass Airport was now providing commercial mogas service for aviation from a truck through the auspices of the EAA.
This was truly bizarre on a number of levels. First, an EAA chapter is a non-profit; they would have to create another corporate entity to sell fuel.
Second, practically nobody sells fuel from a truck only. There are a lot of folks who want to do it, but all of the projects I know about have fallen through, for any number of reasons, most having to do with government bureaucracies.
Third, it is cumbersome to only sell fuel from a truck. It means full-serve in this day of self-service, 24/7 operation.
So, I figured this was just another group of self-interested individuals that had found a way to make mogas available for local use of a privileged few.
Ironically, I’d just tracked down a tip about mogas being “available” at Lancaster Airport in Pennsylvania (KLNS). Turned out that an FBO that isn’t even listed on AirNav was providing mogas for its own LSA operation but would not sell to transient aircraft.
Wanting to verify the story, I called the president of EAA Chapter 725. Like all of the EAA chapter presidents I know, he was friendly and helpful and explained that the chapter had only provided muscle and mechanical know-how to assist in the refurbishing the well used fuel truck.
But he did verify that the truck was indeed in commercial operation, selling mogas on the airport to transients as well as locals. Thus, the number of airports in Oregon with mogas available had indeed doubled. (The other airport is Lebanon State Airport (S30) in Lebanon) And when I looked up Grants Pass Airport on AirNav, there was a listing for mogas availability at the FBO, Pacific Aviation Northwest.
Now, I was extremely interested in how Pacific Aviation had done what no one else I know had been able to accomplish. I wanted to know the gritty details so others could possibly follow in their footsteps.
A call to Pacific Aviation was enlightening. They didn’t have anything to do with the project. They just oversee fuel sales on the airport. The very pleasant and helpful receptionist told me I needed to talk to the airport manager, Larry Graves, to find out how the project transpired.
So, I put in a call to Larry Graves, airport manager extraordinaire. His phone number is listed right there on AirNav. He wasn’t in. I wasn’t surprised. I left a message at about 3 p.m. and figured I’d be lucky if he ever called back, but I would wait a day before I called him back. My phone rang at about 5:30 p.m. with Josephine County in the caller ID. (Grants Pass Airport is in Josephine County, Ore.)
I’ve got to say, Larry Graves is one of the most amazing airport managers I’ve ever run into. The only other one is Larry Knox at Lebanon State, the other airport that sells mogas. Hmm, I wonder if there is some cosmic convergence that airports in Oregon have to have managers named Larry in order to install mogas fuel service? If so, I fear Oregon may have maxed out on mogas airports. And maybe this explains why so few airports install mogas service.
Larry is that rare government employee that has a can-do attitude when he sets his mind to solving a problem. I’ll just summarize what I learned, in the hopes the staff at General Aviation News will do an in-depth interview of Larry and the project that resulted in a valuable fuel service being added at Grants Pass Airport — especially considering that GAN is doing a Future Of Fuels spotlight in November.
Some of the information about the project is summarized in the EAA article. A very used fuel tanker was purchased for next to nothing. Using a lot of volunteer hours, and county expertise in truck maintenance plus additional funds, the truck was refurbished completely and brought up to standards and it passed Fire Marshall inspection and the flow meter was sealed by the Oregon Division of Weights and Measures making it legal for commercial operation.
Granted there are a myriad of other details, but the fact is that Larry shepherded a project through all of the bureaucratic hoops and Grants Pass Airport and Oregon GA are benefiting from his zeal.
Larry reiterated about the number of times he was told it can’t be done. Now that we know it can be done, that’s one less excuse why it can’t.
Perhaps the key to getting it done is the attitude of your airport manager. Just wish there were more airport managers like Larry.
“This was truly bizarre on a number of levels. First, an EAA chapter is a non-profit; they would have to create another corporate entity to sell fuel.”
I am still laughing at this remark.
How many separate corporations do they form when the sell pancakes for profit???
Someone set me straight.
It is my understanding they wouldn’t need to set up another corporation; however, when a non-profit has “unrelated business income” then they need to pay taxes on that income with a Form 990-T (taxable) form in addition to their regular non-profit form. That’s why it is probably better that a taxable corporation entity handle taxable sales of merchandise.
The state of Oregon does not allow self serve fuel for cars. I don’t know if that is true for aircraft as well, but if that is the case, that would explain why fuel sales from a truck are a viable solution in Oregon. If one is required to have someone from the FBO pump the fuel (as is the case at all gas stations in Oregon), then it makes little difference whether the FBO has a fixed fuel depot or a fuel truck. In the rest of the country where self serve fueling is the norm, fueling from a truck would not be a viable solution.
Insurance and regulation for double walled tanks, spill basins, etc, which are not bad ideas, have driven the cost of owning a fuel tank, let alone multiple tanks sky high. That’s why it is no longer economically viable for an FBO to carry multiple grades of fuel.
In the long run, we are going to get stuck with an exotic, high $$ replacement fuel that most of us don’t need. Currently, the cost difference between premium alcohol free Mogas from the gas station and 100LL at the airport is $2.30/gal. The cost difference has allowed be to resume flying my planes as if we were back in the aviation hay days. It’s a shame more can’t take advantage of that kind of cost break.
You say: “In the rest of the country where self serve fueling is the norm, fueling from a truck would not be a viable solution.” but I don’t understand that. So what if self serve has become the norm. The truck idea still sounds like a good one even if the FBO has to have someone there during working hours to pump it from the truck. The truck with attendant would be profitable to the airport so why wouldn’t they want to do it? Splain it to me so I understand it better.
At some airports, there is already someone there at the FBO, so there may not be any additional costs other than the cost of the truck and insurance for the truck..
At many small airports, fuel is all unattended self serve, Paying to have an attendant on site, or available costs money,meaning a mark up in fuel price. That’s why so many places have unattended self serve fuel. Add to that the mark up for low volume sales, and the profit margin goes into the negative or the fuel costs as much as the 100LL over at the self serve pump. At that point, most of us would just go over to the self serve 100LL pump.
Hey, if an FBO thinks they can make a buck by doing this, they will be all over it and I would happily cheer them on. But the reality of the balance sheet will likely raise it’s ugly head and find that most FBOs or municipality owned fuel stations wouldn’t take the risk.
Hmmmmm. Ah so! So it’s not really the nasty ol federal government that stands in the way – just the local airport folks that have to be convinced and an airport manager that would prefer to keep it simple so as not to have to deal with just one more thing at his/her airport. The then would be to convince those over at city hall that this could be a money making proposition and could get more general aviation types to fly in to their city if they had cheaper mogas and after all this would keep some more lead out of the atmosphere as a bonus. Now how do we get everybody to get that mogas STC in order to get the demand up? Or the best solution would be how about an FAA blanket mogas approval? That would be the key……………
“The state of Oregon does not allow self serve fuel for cars. I don’t know if that is true for aircraft as well, …”
The state of Oregon allows self fueling of aircraft.
This is what the problem has always been. The problem is not technical it is political. Find a way around the politics,( local regulations, insurance requirements etc.) and it is doable. There was no problem with selling two types of avgas when 80 was made, there is no physical reason that two types of gasoline can not be stored and sold today.Airport managers want to sell jet fuel because they want to show the large fuel sales receipts to the governing body of the airports.
Way to go I knew that a crack would develop in this
avgas mogas isssue
Very cool. This seems to answer the situtation that most of the 100LL fuel is purchased by the high compression engines anyway and would obviate the need to get rid of the single pump 100LL with some exoctic expensive replacement fuel for all. Wahla – a fuel truck for us mogas guys that don’t burn much anyway – perfect. Get those trucks rolling guys – I can smell three dollar no lead/no ethanol right now………………………please