Shell Fuel

[SatinSilver]

I was kind of curious when I was filling up at the local Shell station and noticed an unfamiliar tanker truck off loading. So I sent the following email:

Hi Mark,

I am a customer of the Truenorth chain of Shell fuel stations. I've noticed that Shell fuel is listed as a Toptiergas.com retailer. I like the Truenorth chain because the stations appear to be newer and cleaner than some other Shell stations. Over the years I've noticed the nice, clean and shiny fuel trucks that had Shell written on the tanker trucks.

Recently, I've noticed non-Shell trucks filling the tanks at the Westlake location. Not sure I'm too fond of this. Especially, since it's the same company that fills the tanks up at Costco in Avon. Just wondering what happened? Thank you,

Dave

Dave, Thanks for your observation. We have a lot of our trucks now have a True North wrap instead of the Shell wrap on them and there are time where the demand might be too great for our own fleet, that we do use outside common carriers. No matter what the circumstances are, it is Shell Gasoline.

Thank you,

Mark


***This company owns 110 Shell stations. After I sent the email I noticed the location in question is NOT on their list of stations anymore. So they may have sold it recently. All circumstantial I know.

 

[hatt]

Don't worry about the name on the truck. Most likely all the gas in an area came from the same place. Only difference is the additives.

 

[Jetronic]

V-power here is GTL based (diesel that is). don't see how it can come from the same place as any other diesel.

I get Gulf diesel, and this fuel is imported from the US using their own tankers.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Yeah, there are tanker operations that service all kinds of stations. If your station needed a load of fuel and the normal Shell tanker could not meet their scheduling demands, it is not uncommon to call a independent carrier to make the delivery. When any tank loads at the terminal, the specifications for fuel is input into the terminal system and the correct fuel and additives at loaded based on who it is being delivered to. And as was stated, it doesn't matter who is hauling the fuel, it is coming out of the same 1 or 2 terminals in the area. When I tanked fuel, I hauled into a lot of different brand stations. My tanker was wrapped in Texaco wrap, but I went into all brands of stations. We hauled for anyone who needed the service.

 

[loneryder]

Trucker is correct about the additives going in at the storage terminal with the exception of Costco. They add their own additives on site. They have automatic equipment that does it per amount of the delivery. If it fails the attendants have to do it manually. One of them told me that it is a pain to hand pump that stuff in as it is very thick. Those Costco attendants receive training on this and safety stuff.
Some time ago Costco published an article on it and indicated that they didn't trust the terminals to mix it properly so they decided to do it themselves. It's a top tier gasoline.