Truck Stops Expanding Purchase Options at Fuel Islands to Speed Driver Transactions

This story appears in the Feb. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

Spurred by the demands of newer diesel engines, changing emissions technology and escalating competition, truck-stop operators say they have begun placing more fuels and other products where drivers can find them fast and buy them with a single swipe of a credit card.

Products such as power fuel blends and diesel exhaust fluid — which once required an in-store visit or at least a separate purchase — are now increasingly found on fuel islands at truck stops and travel plazas. Also found at more islands are liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG).

“We have such large facilities that, as different fueling technologies emerge, we have the ability to change and not hurt our fueling capacity,” said Tom Liutkus, vice president of marketing and public relations for TravelCenters of America and Petro Stopping Centers, Westlake, Ohio. “If we had smaller [parking] lots at our locations, that would be a challenge.”

Liutkus said plans called for all 242 TA-Petro truck stops to be outfitted with on-island diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) by the end of January. He said 200 locations offered the fluid on-island by early January, using dedicated dispensers and point-of-sale systems designed to make buying DEF as easy as buying diesel or gasoline.

But not all truck stops have the ability to expand their fuel-island offerings.

“Our locations were built strictly for gasoline and diesel fuel,” said Jenny Love Meyer, spokeswoman for Love’s Travel Stops, Oklahoma City. As a result, CNG storage is behind the truck stop building, she said.

According to Natso, an Alexandria, Va.-based group representing truck stop operators, North American consumption of DEF was projected to increase to 140 million gallons in 2012 — double the amount in 2011. Natso spokeswoman Holly Alfano cited growing sales of newer Class 8 trucks as the reason.

With the recent addition of Navistar Inc., all new heavy-duty trucks made in the United States use selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to meet 2010 federal engine emissions standards and thus require DEF — which is stored in a separate tank and injected into the exhaust stream of the engine to lower the concentration of nitrogen oxides.

Along with DEF, TA-Petro also expects to begin offering on-island LNG this year.

“We’re in a letter of understanding with Shell Oil Co., and once we have a formal agreement, we’ll work with them to add LNG at our locations,” Liutkus said. “The first installation will be sometime [this year], and we’ll expand from there.”

Shell announced in June plans for more than 200 LNG lanes to be built at roughly 100 TA-Petro locations throughout the country.

During winter months, TA-Petro also offers what Liutkus called “additized” diesel fuel in the northern half of its network. Available on-island for a few cents more per gallon than regular diesel, the product includes a cold-weather additive delivered at the pump and “blended right into the truck’s fuel tank,” Liutkus said.

Although Love’s Travel Stops has limited space on its fuel islands, the company is making DEF available at the pump at all of its 238 locations in 39 states, Love Meyer said.

“We’re almost done,” she said. “DEF is now available at the pump at 203 Love’s Travel Stops, and we expect the last locations to be finished around the end of the first quarter of this year.”

When it comes to making alternative fuels available, however, Love’s is moving more slowly. Love Meyer said the company is still monitoring heavy-duty fleets’ demand for CNG.

“It really is a chicken-and-egg situation,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of money that fleets need to invest to convert their vehicles or to buy new ones, so our customers are still going through the decision-making process about spending additional money on the front end and the payback they will need on the back end.”

She added that fleets’ conversion to alternative fuels “has not been a rapid adoption.”

Love’s began offering CNG for light-duty trucks and passenger vehicles at smaller locations in Oklahoma in early 2011 through a partnership with Chesapeake Energy Corp., Oklahoma City. Then, last year, Love’s converted one of its fuel-transport trucks to CNG and announced it was considering ordering more CNG engines for its 300-truck fleet.

The company opened its first CNG rapid-fueling facility for heavy-duty trucks in Oklahoma City in October. Love Meyer said fill rates at the fast-fuel pumps, which are located on an island that is separate from diesel-fuel dispensers, average 12 gallon-equivalents per minute, allowing a driver to fill a 60-gallon-equivalent tank in about five minutes.

“While the fill time is still slightly more than filling up with diesel fuel, the cost savings over diesel — about $2 per gallon — is significant,” she said.

Love Meyer also said the company will probably expand availability of fast-fill CNG to more locations across Oklahoma and Texas — but space and equipment are considerations.

“A pipe goes from our main natural-gas line to a set of compressors,” Love Meyer explained. Once the fuel is compressed, it moves into a storage container similar to a diesel fuel storage tank.

“It’s a pretty easy process,” she said.

Vic Stibolt is the vice president of Jubitz Corp., Portland, Ore. The company owns Jubitz Travel Center, a 10-lane truck stop in Portland that includes a hotel, movie theater and truck-repair facility.

“We expect to have on-island DEF available in early February,” Stibolt said. “We feel that to be competitive, we need to have it — but it’s an investment.”

That investment is particularly troublesome because the City of Portland classifies DEF as a hazardous substance requiring either a double-walled tank or a physical containment wall for aboveground storage.

“Double-walled tanks are probably twice as expensive as single-walled tanks, and space is at a premium here, making construction of a physical wall a challenge,” Stibolt said.

DEF storage is not yet federally regulated — but that could change. In June, the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced it was contemplating rules for DEF “replenishment” in vehicles that use the fluid.

Having satisfied Portland’s DEF storage regulations, Jubitz Travel Center is moving on. Stibolt said the company is now “in the discussion stages” of adding on-island CNG.

“Our goal is to offer all types of fuel to all types of travelers, and we still want to do that,” he said.

Jubitz already offers B2, B5 and B20 blends of biodiesel at its retail and card-lock pump facility.

Fuel-island DEF is also in the works at I-55 Motor Plaza in Pevely, Mo.

“We’re supposed to get it soon, and that’s good because every year that goes by will increase demand for DEF as more and more new trucks are on the road,” said Jeff Mesplay, the travel plaza’s fuel manager.

Mesplay said I-55 Motor Plaza already offers an on-island mix of premium diesel fuel and “power” additives that sells for about 5 cents more than regular diesel.

“Drivers say it gives better mileage,” Mesplay said of the mix, which is delivered at a rate of 55 gallons of additive for every 7,500 gallons of fuel.

John Compton, CEO of Pilot Flying J Travel Centers, Knoxville, Tenn., said his company regularly treats fuel with anti-gelling additives at the pump. Compton also said that contracting with Clean Energy Fuels Corp., Seal Beach, Calif., Pilot Flying J had deployed LNG at pumps at 59 Flying J facilities by early January.

LNG is natural gas stored as a supercooled liquid. Because LNG must be kept extremely cold, federal regulations require it to be stored in double-walled, vacuum-insulated vessels.

Greg Roche, a vice president of Clean Energy Fuels, said LNG eventually will be available at the pump at “most” Pilot Flying J locations, but no date has been set for project completion.

“Our current objective is to increase the number of LNG stations from 76 today to about 150 by the end of 2013,” Roche told Transport Topics.

Separate LNG fuel islands are being installed, he said, because of space constraints at existing Pilot Flying J islands.

Pilot Flying J also offers DEF at the pump in some 2,700 fuel lanes at 357 locations.

“By the end of 2013, every pump at every fuel lane across all Pilot Flying J locations will offer DEF,” Compton said.

Although truck-stop fuel islands are expanding or multiplying to offer more products, oil and lubricants still aren’t among them — and probably won’t be anytime soon.

“Oil and lubricants are purchased separately and not added to fuel, per industry standards,” said Compton.

That means for some drivers at truck stops, there’s still a reason to pop into the store.