Years ago I used to sell fuel in the UK to dealers, ie those forecourt owners who owned their own sites. Biggest individual sale I ever did was for £65million worth of product. Annual sales was in the 100's of £Millions.
All fuel of each grade of whatever brand is the same until it hits the distribution depot. It's then when the magic herbs and spices so beloved of marketing men get added.
Most regions have a main distribution terminal. Each distribution terminal or tank farm is fed either by pipeline or by rail. The product in homogeneous at that time, satisfying the trading standards and legal aspects of fuel quality. There is one pipeline or one train. There is not an Esso train, or BP train carrying their own branded product or a Shell pipeline or an Esso pipeline doing the same. The terminal itself is likely to be owned either wholly or jointly by one or two oil companies.
Each distribution terminal is owned by a oil company or distributor that supplies its own fuel to each brand on a bunkering/ exchange basis. For example BP in Scotland will supply the fuel for all other brands, including supermarkets, as long as those brands in turn supply those BP sites throughout the country that are not supplied by a BP Terminal.
It would be ruinously expensive and a huge duplication if each fuel brand had its own distribution terminal in every region.
This is why at each terminal you will see lots of different brands tankers all filling up together. And also because you will see lots of unbranded , white normally, tankers filling up also.
The addition of brand specific additives takes place either at the tanker manifold filling station or in sprcific branded tanks at the terminal.
It used to be common practice that the tanker driver would add the additives into bog standard fuel at the tanker filling manifold but following the realisation that the tanker drivers had a habit of dropping all the additives for 25,00 litres into the front 5,000 litre pot this was made an automatic function ( Anyone remember a police force using shell V power when it first came out, getting a load of engines and fuel systems replaced because of premature failure. It also rotted pipe junctions causing lots of undergrounds storage tank problems. Pesky drivers eh).
So standard diesel, u/l is the same no matter what brand you use. Same with the higher octane fuels, that used to be Super Unleaded when I was in the game. It arrived from the one refinery, down the one pipeline, into the one tank and is then distributed to its various brands, with additives if required for branding purposes, added either at the manifold or in the tank farm in specified tanks.
Talk about getting the "fuel dregs" is fantasy. The legal and reputational damage that would be caused by selling inferior fuels would be lethal to the business and besides that, there are no dregs available given the huge volumes of road fuels being pumped, railed and shipped around the country.
For my part I buy the very cheapest fuel I can for the Mrs's diesel Toyota , and presently am an afficianado of LPG for my own snotter and will be gassing up my Cobra when I have/ make time.
If I feel the need to clean the fuel injectors or spice up my fuel I stick some paint thinners into the tank. A cheap octane raising boost of Naptha, methanol, acetone and toluene. I leave the diesel Toyota well alone.
Using an higher octane than the car is designed to run on is a waste of money and unless the ecu can take advantage and pull timing and is mapped to do so the benefit the user will get is psychological.
Which is exactly what all the brand reinforcement carried out by the fuel companies aim for. And judging from this thread all that money spent on advertising is not wasted.
HTH.
Cheers,
Tony
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