keeping them running
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Many hundreds of engine hours are clocked up by vehicles using the main power plant for driving auxiliary equipment such as cargo discharging, refrigeration plants and materials handling devices. While there are large savings to be made in terms of man-hours involved in the manual handling of cargoes, the fuel used for auxiliary running must amount to several hundreds of gallons per vehicle per year and in most cases this is drawn from the running tank carrying fully-taxed Derv.
I have just learned of a new unit which measures fuel usage while a vehicle is running its engine either under off-road conditions or for powering auxiliaries. The device is called the Fuelometer and it has been introduced in the USA by Columbia Systems Co.. of Portland, Oregon. It has, it seems, already been approved in many States of the USA by legislative and tax commissioners, as an accurate and fully acceptable means of compiling fuel tax exemption claims; the most popular model records fuel flow automatically when a vehicle's spring parking brakes are applied.
With fuel tax on Dery standing at 4s fid in the UK, it may well prove to be a useful point for operators of vehicles with auxiliaries to check up just how much they spend in unnecessary tax in the course of a year. After all if the usage is only 1 gallon per hour and the vehicle runs for 2hr on each working day—as is not unusual with tankers for instance—this means that at the end of the year the vehicle has clocked up £112 10s worth of tax whickit had no need to incur.
Installation of the Fuelometer is simple, it is claimed, usually being completed in about an hour. The unit is air activated and installed on the pick-up side of the fuel lift pump. Meter readings are measured by positive displacements and after four months of evaluation and field testing on both Cummins and Detroit diesel engines, it is reported that the instrument has been proved accurate to within 0.5 per cent.
The Customs and Excise say that rebated oil may only he used for ancillary purposes if there is a separate engine for such use. and a completely separate fuel supply. However, pressures applied by interested organizations have been known to alter the bureaucratic mind in the past.
Further information cart be obtained from Columbia Systems Co., 5805 S.E. Gladstone, Portland, Oregon 97206.