Natural Gas Bee Truck

[pahvantpiper]

These diesel prices are killing me. I bought a local beekeeping operation and it came with a 2007 450 ford with only 300 miles on it!!! I don't really need the truck so am looking into selling it or trading it in on a gas truck and having it converted over to cng (compressed natural gas). In Utah many homes, including mine, are heated with natural gas (about $.70 per gallon). You can have a charging system hooked up to your house for a few grand and fill up your truck right at home. It's slow but it's cheap.

Anyway, is anyone familiar with this? Lots of places will convert an engine to propane but natural gas doesn't seem to be nearly as common. Does anyone have any leads or are familiar with natural gas vehicles?

[Keith Jarrett]

Anyway, is anyone familiar with this? ?

Yes, u.p.s. is on that fuel, but it does not have the same energy that other fuels have.

[alpha6]

Hey, I'll give you 5k for the 450...:)

[BEES4U]

Q. Which fuel burns hotter, propane or natural gas (methane)? (Home heating data.)

A. Propane is the hotter burning fuel. Propane is a gas that is present in most natural gas and is the first product refined from crude petroleum. It contains approximately 2,500 Btu per cubic foot. Methane is the chief constituent of natural gas and has a heating value of about 1012 Btu per cubic foot. Therefore, propane has more than twice the heat value of natural gas per cubic foot.

Regards,
Ernie

[Swobee]

We had a number of service vehicles powered by CNG around 10 years back. The biggest problem at that time was capacity. These were standard heavy duty half-ton or 3/4-ton pickups loaded with tool boxes, parts, etc. The guys were lucky to get 80-100 miles if even that out of a refill. That proved to be a pretty serious inconvenience. You will need to run some numbers and I can assure you that NG prices are not $0.70/ Therm at the moment. NG shot up like a rocket over the last nine weeks, then has been in a free fall the last week and a half. More like $1.20 today but don't forget to add delivery charges, meter fee, franchise fees, taxes and other costs added to energy.

The fuel gas market has been quite a roller coaster lately. Normally NG is pretty low in price during spring & early summer. This year due to over taxing placed on the electrical grid, so much NG is being used for peaking production. The stockpiles that were normally filled in summer are being depleated big-time for power peaking. Equipment for refilling LPG is easier to obtain and the vehicle conversions are more affordable. But, with highway taxes, LPG isn't a very cheap fuel either.

Neither NG or LPG deliver the Btu/volume that gasolene does and that delivers less 'oomph' than diesel. You're buying Btu's, not jsut volumes of fuel. Add in highway taxes to your NG that drives up the cost even further. I'm not trying to talk you out of it, but there's more to these conversions than meets the eye at first. However, NG is certainly more eco-friendly than diesel or gasolene regarding exhaust wastes, so there's some give and take with either fuel source.