9mo ago

Just saw this while getting gas. Why is it illegal to get less than 4 gallons?

188 comments

Found it. Since the gas goes through the same hose as the other blends, if you're buying gas you need to get at least 4 gallons so the previous gas flushes out what was left in the hose from the previous sale, and fills enough of the container that the blend is primarily what you selected.
If you buy E15 and fill your tanks, then the next guy buys E10 and only gets 1 gallon, they might end up with a higher ethanol mix than intended, and if they use that on a small motor, like a chainsaw, it could ruin the seals.
- I'm in Europe and I have never in my life seen a gas station that dispenses every fuel through just one hose.
  Every fuel has its own hose and "pistol". Each "pump" has two or three or four hoses.
  
  In America, if a corner exists a company will cut it.
  
  In the US only diesel gets its own pump, at least in my experience
  
  (US) I've been to gas stations in big cities, small towns, little collections of buildings that have no official name but they have a dollar general and a gas station, etc...
  I've seen several kinds.
  Single hose to dispense 87-93 ("normal") gasoline, and one for diesel
  One hose for normal gas, one for diesel, and one for high-ethanol
  One for all gasoline types and one for diesel
  One super fancy stainless-steel-clad gas station that looked like something from retrofuturism had 5 hoses, one each for 87,90,93, e15, diesel, and the farthest end pump had a line for kerosine.
  Never seen a combined gas and diesel hose though.
  
  Here's a pretty typical american pump: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-shell-station-gas-pump-135764267.html You can select diesel with the green button, which comes out of the green handled hose on the left, but any other option for regular gas (87/89/93 in that picture) comes out of the right hose.
  
  In America drastically different fuels like E85 and Diesel are dispensed with different hoses as mixing those with normal gasoline or vice versa in the wrong system could cause damage. But when it comes to different grades of just gasoline it's all the same hose. E10 or E15 are pretty much standard in many parts of the Country of Corn (USA) so they are the primary form of gasoline available for normal cars.
  
  Every fuel has its own hose and “pistol”. Each “pump” has two or three or four hoses.
  While those do exist in the States too, a single hose and "pistol" is used for all grades of gasoline and the operator presses a button to select their grade of fuel. The only time there is a guaranteed separate is between desil and gasoline:
  
  The button leads to some interesting minor social problems. The expectation is that the use uses their hand or fingers to press the button, but the buttons are usually disgustingly dirty, so that lead many to using the tip of the "pistol" to smack the grade of gasoline which may put a drop or two of gasoline on the button. So those that come next and use their hands end up smelling like gasoline.
  No longer interacting with public gas pumps is one minor joy of driving an EV.
  
  its a thing often in America, there's just 1 hose and you press a button to select what blend you want.
  
  I'm in Australia and it's on the pumps—like little manufacturer stamps that don't seem to be aftermarket labels. Most people wouldn't notice it and those that do wouldn't understand what it means.
  It's generally a tiny label like "Minimum 5L" or something, near the nozzle, or on/below the meters.
  
  Not in the us
- I'm not from the US so my biggest surprise here is that you don't get separate hoses for each grade.
  
  Imagine getting Diesel in Germany. “Sorry, that was actually 15 liters of regular gas. ¯(ツ)_/¯”
  Edit: Ok, it’s not as bad as I imagined, since this picture seems to be about E15/E10, not diesel/regular.
- Thanks for the explanation! I wonder what they would do if they caught someone dispensing only 3 gallons.
  
  Federal law states the punishment is a bare bottom spanking.
  😳
  
  Probably nothing. I guess it's possible if you kept switching back and forth between pumping a gallon of premium and a gallon of regular on different pumps to try to steal a few dollars of higher grade, they can use it to give you a ticket, but I'm pretty sure they won't really care if you were just topping off a tank of gas with 3 gallons before a road trip.
  
  straight to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison
- I didn't know this before and it adds credence to my feeling that it's better to let my tank get below 1/4 full before filling it up, rather than continually topping it up.
  
  The vast majority of cars run fine on 87 octane. If that's what you're using, then it really doesn't matter if there is some 89 or 92 in the hose.
  
  I fill up when I hit 1/4 tank as well. Don’t wait for it to go below though, as it can be bad for the engine with deposits and other stuff in the tank.
  
  You should be filling up closer to a third. The fuel pump is cooled by the fuel and letting the fuel run too low can cause more wear and tear on the pump, causing it to fail.
- How fucking big are American canisters? In Germany the regular size is 5l, [Edit: ~~just shy of~~ a bit more than] one gallon.
  
  5l, just shy of one gallon.
  5L can't be shy of a gallon. 4L is more than a gallon.
  checks
  Yeah, a gallon is 3.7854118 L.
  Oh...wait. You're in Europe. I bet that you're thinking of imperial gallons.
  checks
  That's about 4.5 L. Still not the case even with imperial gallons.
  When people are talking about gallons in the US, they won't be using imperial gallons. They're using the US gallon.
  
  Portable US gas tanks are typically 1, 2, or 5 gallon.
  I usually just grab a 5 gallon (about 20L) can to fill up my lawn mower, throw some fuel stabilizer in there, and then I don't have to go back to the gas station for a long time.

These signs also exist in the Netherlands, and the reason is because pumps are calibrated to a certain accuracy (say, 1%, for convenience).
But in the real world, you can get a lot of variation from temperature, to how long it's been since a pump was used, to how full the underground tank is. They all made a difference, mostly at the start and end of pumping.
So you get a law in percentages, and you get a real world deviation in volume. Obviously, if your pump is short 50ml on 1 liter, you're off by 5% and breaking the law. But of you slap a sticker on, telling everyone they "must" get 5 liters, you're off 50ml on 5L, a perfect 1% deviation and entirely within the limit.
But 8 gallon is BIG volume, damn.
- In Canada ours have a sticker that says the amounts are calibrated to a certain temperature (15C I think), so I assumed it took that into account. I try not to think about how much it costs so didn't over analyze it.
- What happens if you try to fuel a vehicle with a tank smaller than 5 gallons, for example a typical small motorbike?
  
  Just spray the rest on your car, the ground, or whatever. It's like having fun with the water hose!
  
  Nothing. But you might not fall within the legally required accuracy, so maybe you're overpaying very slightly.

Does this pump also dispense marked fuels through the same hose?
In my province of residence gas stations near farming communities often sell “marked fuel” (fuel with an added red dye in it) that are taxed less, and which are intended for farming machinery, road work equipment, boats, and other non-highway use only. If you’re caught with red-dyed fuel being used for any other purpose you can be charged with an offence, and levied fines or other penalties.
If you dispense a small amount of regular gasoline after another purchaser had bought marked gasoline, the dye in the fuel remaining in the lines likely isn’t diluted enough to tell the difference — and you could (hypothetically) then be charged with possessing marked fuel without the proper paperwork.
(Anywhere I’ve ever seen marked fuels sold usually has a separate hose for the marked fuel to be dispensed from to prevent this from happening — but I don’t know your gas station or where you live, so maybe they rely on dilution rather than separation to differentiate?)
- The rural area i live in has pumps thst give non-ethanol fuel but is not dyed and costs more than the e85 they sell. No placards anywhere stating any federal fueling minimums either. I routinely fill a 2 gallon tank of nonethanol for my old yard equipment and have never had an issue
  
  I don't think marked ~~girl~~ gas necessarily has no ethanol. It's just tax free.
  Edit: typo
- how often do the police pull people over to check their fuel color though?
  
  It is not uncommon for semi trucks and other heavy haul vehicles to be checked. They can frequently hold several hundred gallons of fuel. So there's a real cost saving using off-road diesel. Though if I remember correctly fine is $10,000 for the first offense so that wipes out your savings pretty quickly.
  
  Easier to check driver color.
  
  About as often as they check how many gallons of gas you pumped.
- I can't say for Canada but in the USA I have never seen or heard of off-road gasoline. And I worked enough farms and ranches that at least one of them would have been using it if it existed. So I highly doubt this is an off road tax reason.
  Edit - it seems some people maybe thinking I am talking about off road diesel. I am not, I am specifically referring to only unleaded gasoline.
  
  I talked to a farmer in Kansas (near Colby, iirc) who had his own gas pump for farm/off-road use only, so it does exist here. Probably only found on pretty big farms though.
  
  I know you weren’t directly questioning my assertion, but in case anyone else happens to think I’m just blowing smoke: Coloured Fuel | DriveSmart BC.
  
  No, it exists in the States. I used to be a truck driver, and we used marked fuel in our refrigerator units all the time since those engines are not powering a highway vehicle.
  
  I used died gasoline in a boat.

I got curious so I duckduckgo'd that shit.
Link
- Thank you for sharing the link. Here's the relevant bit from the article:
  Most gas stations don’t want to install new tanks just for E15. Instead, they’re installing blender pumps, which mix the ethanol and gasoline together in the right proportion depending on which one you want. But there’s a problem: if you pump E15 into your car, about a third of a gallon remains in the fueling hose when you’re done. If someone comes along, switches to E10, and buys a single gallon for their lawnmower, they’ll get a third of a gallon of E15 and two-thirds of a gallon of E10. That comes to about 11.7% ethanol, and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
  So the EPA produced a new rule: if you sell E15, you have to require your customers to buy at least four gallons of gas regardless of what blend they’re buying. That’s a big enough purchase that the residual fuel in the hose is too small to matter
  
  I totally won't use this knowledge to try to fuck with Sheetz.
  
  So... what are they gonna do if you don't fuel enough? Is it just up to God to not let someone else fuck up their equipment after you've fueled up?
  
  Except the warning is on the e15 and not the standard gas.
  So it doesn't matter if I buy 1, 2, 20 gallons of e15... As an e15 buyer I get the chance that it's more gas than ethanol.
  The warning of 4 gallons needs to be applied to the non-ethanol blend gasolines, as those are the ones at risk!
  
  and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
  Ethanol burns hotter?

Buying E10 fuel (a mixture that contains 10 percent ethanol) from a hose that also supplies E15 fuel (a mixture that contains 15 percent ethanol) must buy at least four gallons to protect customers following behind. Ethanol is hard on engines and less efficient than regular gasoline. E15 can even cause engine failure in smaller or older engines. So if you’re using a blender pump to buy E10 that sells both E15 and E10, the residual amount of E15 left in the hose from the previous customer could cause significant damage to those smaller and older engines—unless you purchase at least 4 gallons.
Source
- Hold the fuck up.
  Customer A buys 10 gallons of E15.
  Customer B buys 1 gallon of E10 from the same pump.
  Customer C buys 1 gallon of E10 from the same pump and puts it in his chainsaw. If that gallon ruins Customer C's chainsaw, it's legally Customer B's fault? What the fuck?
  Forcing B to buy more gas than he might want, to protect the customer after him, because of the customer that came before him, is some horseshit.
  
  The gas companies bought a law to exempt themselves from liability.
  
  Legally customers C fault. He needed to buy 4 gallons and fucked himself.
  
  Why is it bad to have rules which prevent harm to everyone?
  Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything. You ever see a 2oz bottle of Coke?
- This seems like it's flipped around backwards. The picture says you have to pump more than 4 gallons if you are getting E15, but the explanation seems to explain why someone pumping E10 would want to pump more than 4 gallons.
  I bet the real reason is that someone could pump a couple of gallons of cheaper E15, knowing they'd actually receive E10, leaving the next person to actually get that gas.
- Ok, that makes sense, but why a federal law?
  
  Why force companies to buy pumps that blend when you can force all liability onto the customer?
  Gas stations can get away buying cheap blending pumps and if it breaks someone's older car just shrug and say it must have been the previous customer's fault, we're not liable.
  
  It's probably administrative law associated with DOT regulations. So yes it is a law but not quite in the same way you think of when Congress passes a law. Instead Congress passed a law that said DOT we give this agency the power to regulate these specific things. Go create a working committee and create some regulation. Administrative law is a bit more like civil law than criminal law. In general violation is just fine and they are handled by administrative law courts. Part of what makes them so different is they do not fall under the justice department they are contained within whichever agency has jurisdiction over that area of regulation. They've been affirmed to be functionally the same as federal courts, but can only sanction the guilty party in the exact manner the regulation says. Otherwise when the case is concluded and a party is found guilty is then referred to a federal court for sanctions.

There's actually a really good explanation for this.
This is a mixing pump. It mixes ethanol into the fuel. Because the mixing happens before the part of the pump that measures how much is being dispensed, you need at least a few gallons to fully flush things out and get somewhere close to what you're actually buying.
Nobody is going to come arrest you if you buy 2 gallons of gas. But the gas you get me not be the mix you wanted.

Fucking 15% ethanol now? So they basically just raised the price of gasoline 5%, and reduced the fuel efficiency of everyone's vehicle, without so much as a peep. Where is this?
- E15 is a different blend of fuel, it's not at all gas pumps and regular 87/89/91 octane level fuel is still available (because not all cars can use E15 like the sticker says). Sheetz stations sell it in my area around Raleigh, NC.
  
  What an appropriately named station.
- I would expect it to also be less expensive but they don't show us that information.
  I personally wouldn't mind if my fuel mileage goes down if the cost is also proportionally lower.
  Also, ethanol has a energy density of roughly 2/3 that of gasoline, so yes e85 would have 5% less energy than gasoline with no ethanol, not e10, which is what I see as the listed price in most places. When doing a price comparison, it should be against e0, not e10 if you are expecting a 5% energy difference.
  
  Where I have purchased it it has been cheaper.
  
  We also pay for it in grocery costs from crops switching.
- Would you prefer they ban driving? we simply cannot keep going as we are, things have to change and you can either change your habits alongside it, accept that you have to pay more, or whine as you keep pumping poison into the air and contribute to your own early death from climate change.

Which is it, up to 15% or up to 10% ethanol?
- It's 10% in the winter and 15% in the summer (at least that's the legal limit), although I think that's changing. So I guess they just said what the hell and put on both stickers?
  
  Where I live you can get zero percent and even leaded gasoline...
- I think there might be two options to the right (yellow stickers) indicating eg 95E15 and 98E10

It either violates federal law or it doesn't. May is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Not to mention there are signs for both up to 10% and up to 15%...
If the purpose of the warning is to make sure people get the blend they want then just say that.
- This... Why is this sign ambiguous? To avoid improper fuel blends, dispense 4 gallons minimum, federal law.
- Walking around may violate federal law. Depends on where.

Ethanol is wildy bad for the environment and is raising the cost of food.
I read somewhere awhile back that it takes something like 3 gallons of gasoline (through running farm equipment and transportation) to make 4 gallons of ethanol. That coupled with ethanol being less efficient that gasoline and causes more wear and rear on vehicles probably means that if we ditched it altogether we'd probably the same carbon emissions wise.
Also, for every acre of corn raised to go into ethanol, that's one acre not going into feed corn or other food crops so we're effectively raising the cost of food via limiting supply and competition.
The only people that benefit are farmers that recieve substantial subsidies to grow it and government personnel who administer said subsidies and elected officials that campaign on taking money from you the tax payer and funneling it into these programs.
The cost to all of us is diffused, probably no more than a few tens of dollars taken from us via taxes so nobody is gonna go stand up to these people and demand that we end this subsidy. The benefit to them is very focused and large so they have every interest to keep the cash flowing their way. Every interest to take money from all classes of people but most damaging to the poorest of people since those dollars mean more to them than richer peoples.
This wildest part is that you who is reading this right now is probably outraged that this program is in place but the even crazier part is that you can substitute this with practically any and all industries and they are all doing the exact same thing but for the things that you agree with, are perfectly fine with keeping those subsidies flowing. After all, it's only the other people that are greedy. The only real solution is to completely end all federal subsidies but I'm sure you'll disagree and say that XYZ is necessary because it's your special interest.
- You're not wrong about the whole corn subsidy switch to E85 being terrible. It was purely about getting Midwest votes specifically winning Iowa in the primaries. It is worth noting though that E10/15 is not intended as a replacement for gasoline like E85 is. The ethanol in E10/15 is both a fuel oxidizer and an anti knock agent. So it reduces tailpipe emissions by helping make a more complete burn and increases the octane of gasoline by two or three points meaning the gasoline has to be less refined.
  Ethanol replaced MTBE, it is not clear how and at what level MTBE is toxic. But it is extremely water-soluble and has the ability to leak out of sealed underground tanks. This of course led to very easy contamination of groundwater and aquifers with MTBE. Which was probably a bad thing.
  For anyone who cares MTBE replaced Tetraethyllead. And if I have to explain why lead is bad to anyone they've had too much lead exposure.
  Spelling
- Yeah, back in the nineties I was super hyped on ethanol, and then I found out how bad it really is. It was disappointing :(

Fuck you if you own a motorcycle, I guess.
My RV200's tank only holds 1.7 gallons, and my CH50 will only take one. I guess I'm meant to just dispense the remaining three gallons onto the ground, then...?
- From morocyclistonline.com:
  Running your bike on E15 may cause your engine to run hot and could possibly damage your bike's catalytic convertor as well as cause crud buildup on your valves and pistons.
- Ethanol fucks up the rubber in my 1980s Suzuki carburetor. I wish I could find an alternative.
  
  I feel you. E10 is the lowest content we can get anywhere around me. I have to ride about 90 miles to get to the nearest station with non-ethanol fuel.
  There is Sta-Bil 360 which allegedly mitigates the effects of ethanol at least in storage. I always use it in my bikes overwinter, and I haven't had any issues... yet.
  Several stations around me have removed their mid grade option to sell E85 in that pump slot instead. You can have E10 regular, E10 premium, E85, or fuck off. I have seen a few shiny new stations on the interstate that only offer E15, which seems to happen most often out in corn country. I get that there's only so much oil in the ground, but you're right -- there has to be a better way. It's just probably not as cheap...
- Yeah and which one of those are you putting ethanol in?

how do they enforce that? seems undoable
- I've seen a cop show in the UK, they had a long stick they put down your fuel filler and it captured a tiny amount, they pull it out and can tell by colour. Normal fuel is clear/yellowy and marked is usually red.

I think it has to do with how it’s dispensed. If the person before you bought regular fuel, the hose still might have residual fuel from the other kind, meaning you could end up with a different ethanol level than expected. That’s a fire hazard. 4 gallons is probably overkill but better safe than sorry.
Edit: basically, if you accidentally get half a gallon of 10% ethanol fuel and half a gallon of 15% ethanol fuel, you actually have 12.5%.
- Has that always been the law and I just never noticed a sticker like that before?
  
  Not sure how long it’s been a law but not a ton of places sell E15. I only ever see it on road trips personally.

does this mean 2001+ OR flex fuel? or 2001+ AND flex fuel?
the former wouldn't make sense as that doesn't really exist, but if it were the latter then that's a really ambiguous warning.
- If your vehicle was made after 2001 OR specifically labeled as flex fuel

How would this be enforced?
- Four ways:
  1: It’s not.
  2: The pump charges a minimum of 4 gallons.
  3: The pump dispenses at least four gallons, and won’t shut off before then.
  4: A cop watches every time a person fills up.
  Personally, #3 would be the most fun, from a distance.

Dont use ethanol fuel. It may damage your car, and make your car weaker.
- I don't know why you think I have a choice in the matter.

Because commies.

So you're American? I can't think of any good reason why that might be
- Probably because they were born in America. They have family there, friends, job located there, etc
  
  It's a joke
- Could be that they're trying to restrict putting E15 in small, portable gas cans?
  
  That would be one explanation! If that's what you want to prevent I'd just be writing that down tho, and you could always just put the remaining two gallons in your car

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