Road Crews Cook Up Diesel Fuel Alternative Fried Eggs, Cooking Oil Lead To Substitute For Hazardous Cleaning Agent

It took a lot of experimentation, but the Idaho Transportation Department has found that cooking oil serves as a good substitute for diesel fuel in some circumstances.

The agency’s maintenance section oversees more than 5,000 state highway miles and a yearly maintenance budget of more than $110 million. Yet when environmental concerns caused a problem, District 3 storekeeper Fred Trescott came up with the answer due to the two fried eggs he ate one morning.

Because of regulations calling for the reduction of hazardous waste and materials a few years ago, the department stopped using diesel fuel to oil or clean maintenance equipment.

Steve Miller, special crew foreman for the department’s southwestern Idaho office, was in charge of finding a replacement.

“Diesel was ideal because it was the only thing we found that would keep surfaces halfway clean so that they would be usable,” he said. Cleaning machinery by hand was taking a lot of time, time that could be used better elsewhere.

Miller experimented with more than a dozen alternative cleaners, including several high-powered asphalt release agents, but all were lacking.

“Some oiled the machinery sufficiently, but wouldn’t clean asphalt or other materials out of the truck beds used for hauling. Or vice versa,” he said.

“We spent at least six months trying to come up with a suitable substitute,” Miller said. There were some good solutions, but they were expensive.

Trescott, now the department’s District 3 supply operations supervisor, came up with the cooking oil suggestion. “I fried a couple of eggs that morning, using just a dab of vegetable oil, and they didn’t stick. So I thought, ‘Why wouldn’t it keep asphalt from sticking?”’

Miller ordered 10 gallons. Temperature was the first obstacle. Some products wouldn’t work at cold temperatures and other substances would simply evaporate in heat.

Trials showed vegetable oil would work fine.

A special crew started using it as a truck bed cleaner with excellent results. They sprayed truck beds after each load, using just a thin stream. And they only had to spray trucks once a day.

Miller said the process is similar to using a vegetable oil in a cooking pan. “The vegetable oil absorbs into the pores of the metal. In a short time, you have to use less and less oil to get the same results because a coating builds up.”