Choosing the best oil for your operation is only part of the equation when it comes to making sure you’ve got the right oil in your trucks. There are a lot of things that can happen between the order and the fill, including the distributor delivering the wrong oil or oil that’s accidentally mixed with other oil; having a bulk oil tank with a mishmash of oils that keeps you from getting the performance you need and expect; and contaminants getting into the oil before or during the fill.
Even if you choose the right licensed oil, that’s no guarantee that it’s the oil actually going into your truck engines.
Bruce Stockton, who’s now a fleet consultant under the company name Stockton Solutions, has worked for some of the country’s largest fleets. When he arrived to head up the maintenance department at one major carrier, he discovered that the brand of oil being spec’ed was not what was actually in the fleet facility’s bulk tanks.
Viscosity issues can cause overheating, breakdown of the oil film, reduced power, oxidation, and fuel economy losses.
And if they have work done over the road or by third parties, it’s a good idea to have some sort of certification in writing from the third party as to what oil they’re actually putting in the truck — and then test it, he says.
Bulk oils seem to be the biggest offender. API buys oils in the marketplace and tests them to make sure the oils that are claiming to be licensed actually match the oil that API licensed, and to make sure the oils meet the viscosity index and performance claimed.
Where do things go wrong? For instance, if the oil is delivered through a hose from a tanker truck, that hose may hold up to 20 gallons of oil from a previous delivery.
Ferrick recommends fleets talk to their distributors about practices and procedures they have in place to avoid these kind of issues, especially if they’ve had problems in the past.
Steve Phillips is president of Allied Oil & Tire in Omaha, Nebraska, a 59-year-old business with significant focus on the heavy-duty commercial truck market, and he says the API’s tank sampling statistics are alarming.
“When I first came into this business, about 18% of the tanks API sampled did not even meet the viscosity requirements,” he says. And then there were the tests that indicated that customers were not using the brand they thought they were. Phillips says 42% of the tank samplings did not meet the “thumbprint” on file with API of the brand of oil it was supposed to be.
Allied handles several national brands and also offers its own private-label line of oils, and it’s very stringent in its quality control procedures.
While oil makers such as Shell and Valvoline audit their distributors, Allied audits itself every month, Phillips says, and every quarter has a quality compliance auditor come in. “Some may consider this excessive, but our reputation and the quality of our customer’s oil is the most critical thing we do, especially given the statistics from API.” In fact, the company became API Motor Oil Matters (MOM) Certified as a distributor, where API audits Allied.
Oil makers, distributors, and API all recommend drawing a bulk tank down to 5% to 10% before changing oils, or even draining it altogether.
If you’re transitioning from CJ-4 to CK-4, API recommends you draw down the CJ-4 product to as little as possible, as difficult as it may be, says API’s Ferrick. “A small amount of comingling would probably be OK, but more than that would reduce performance.
If you’re switching oils in your bulk tank, there’s another good reason to drain the tank, says Stede Granger, Shell OEM technical services manager. “We find fleets using bulk tanks over a period of time can accumulate water, especially if they are outside where you get larger temperature swings. We think when you’re upgrading to CK-4, that’s probably a real good time to check the tank and make sure there’s not water in the bottom. As you draw a tank down you pull air into it, and that air has some level of water in it, and temperature swings cause that water to condense on the inside of the tank.” Get too much water in the oil, and you can run into problems with abnormal wear and even rusting in the engine.
But in real life, draining tanks doesn’t often happen, Stockton says.
“I can’t remember anybody ever completely draining and flushing a bulk oil tank before they took a new shipment,” he says, which means fleets are continually mixing different brands and even different viscosities or API specs.