Pizza Talk | Pizza Operator | Pizza Business

Pizza Talk: Pizza Delivery Costs Too High? Fuel Your Delivery Car For Free

Yesterday we had a rude shock. We had to pay $50 to fill up our gas tank. Based on this alone, we canceled a trip we were thinking of taking. We were lucky to have the option.

If you are in the pizza business and regularly deliver, you might not be so lucky. Delivery might be such an ingrained part of your business that it could drastically impact your sales if you simply stop delivering or cut back.

With gas prices so high, the cost of gas used to deliver a pizza is becoming a major factor. But now there is something you can do about it.

What's the solution?

Convert a diesel car or van to run on cooking oil and fuel it with the waste cooking oil from your restaurant.

Don't laugh. At least one pizza operator is doing just that. A recent news article describes how Keith Dalton of Cosmic Pizza, Morgantown, West Virginia converted his diesel truck to run on waste cooking oil from his restaurant. Dalton claims to get 50 miles per gallon from cooking oil.

Don't start pouring your waste oil into your diesel car's fuel tank just yet though. You will need to buy a conversion kit for your vehicle for it to work properly.

Why a conversion kit? Because cooking oil needs to be heated to 150 degrees F in order to reduce its viscosity and let it flow through the fuel system correctly.

Your waste oil also needs to be filtered to remove the crud that gets mixed into it with cooking.

Luckily you can purchase a conversion kit for your vehicle that handles these technical details. There are now several sources of diesel to cooking oil conversion kits on the market. The two basic systems are two tank kits and single tank kits. Two tank systems let you switch back and forth between diesel and cooking oil while single tank kits let you run exclusively on cooking oil.

To convert your car, van or truck you need to buy the kit that is specific for your vehicle. There are several companies providing these kits. The kits typically cost about $790 and can be installed by someone who is fairly handy and not afraid of getting their hands dirty.

Here are three sources of kits just to get you started:

GreaseCar Vegetable Fuel Systems, online at www.greasecar.com, phone (413) 529-0013.

Greasel Conversions, Inc. online at www.greasel.com, phone (866) 473-2735

Elsbett, online at www.elsbett.de/engl/

These companies' web sites also provide detailed instructions on how to collect and store the waste oil to ensure it is free from water and bacterial contamination.

If you have been paying to have your waste oil hauled away, you will be seeing even more benefits as you save on this expense. What better way to get rid of your waste oil than to power your delivery vehicles with it?

Another benefit of this conversion is that the vehicle will not smell of diesel or petroleum. Drivers of waste oil powered cars report that their vehicles smell of tacos, fried chicken or Chinese food. Think how many sales you are going to get when you drive a delivery vehicle that exudes the aroma of pizza from its exhaust.

With only a little effort you can recoup your investment in the conversion in under a year and from then on it is money in your pocket.

And finally, there is the community good will that results from driving an environmentally friendly vehicle. Drivers of cooking oil powered vehicles have taken their cars into EPA test facilities out of curiosity to see what the emissions were. They learned that they are far lower than for standard diesel fuels.

It may be time for you to seriously consider converting your diesel vehicle to run on cooking oil. At a time when gasoline prices are forcing other restaurants to hike delivery charges and raise prices, this is one way that you can save on both fuel and waste disposal costs while demonstrating to your community that your business is environmentally friendly.