McDermott, Samuel
Fuel for thought
Issue #31
Used as an alternative to gasoline, Piebald says using vegetable oil is like ‘liquid gold’
By Kelly Mellott
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
As light drains from the Chicago sky, clutching our buckets tight with rubber gloves, we scurry past kids lined up at the sold-out Metro. We’re on a hunt. I only met the three present members of indie-rock outfit Piebald — drummer Luke Garro, guitarist Aaron Stuart, and guitarist-vocalist Travis Shettel — a few moments ago, but it’s already time for my first hunting lesson. What exactly are we hunting for?
In a word: grease.
We’re on a mission for fuel to power Thor, Piebald’s affectionately named E350 Ford bus. Thor was converted by Stuart, a mechanic by trade, into a tour bus that runs on veggie oil — waste left over from cooking and food preparation that you can find in dumpsters behind restaurants.
“Hold this, please,” says Stuart, handing me his coat as he rolls up his sleeves next to a dumpster behind an Italian restaurant. The guys need to check the grease to make sure it’s the “good,” food chunk–free kind that is suitable for fuel.
“Good grease is like liquid gold,” Garro explains. “It runs smoothly, has no chunks in it, and makes your grease system happy. Bad grease looks like butter pudding and usually has whole pieces of chicken skin or egg rolls floating in it.”
Luckily, we’ve hit gold here and the extraction begins. Later, the grease will be poured directly into Thor’s fuel tank and the guys will start the bus on diesel in order to let the grease heat up. Once it has reached the right temperature, a switch is flipped and Thor switches to the grease fuel tank. The bus runs exactly the same as it would on regular fuel.
For touring bands like Piebald and their grease-loving peers mewithoutYou, the Fold, Monsters Are Waiting, and Ozma, the benefits of veggie oil fueling outweigh the few negative aspects. “[There’s] less pollution; veggie oil is a renewable resource. It is very cost-effective and there’s less monetary support of the crazy war we are fighting,” says Shettel.
The conversion from regular fuel system to veggie oil costs anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 but saves the driver thousands on fuel in the long run.
“On an average one-month tour, we usually spent $6,000 on fuel,” says Garro. “Lately we’ve been spending under $1,000 on diesel to run the system. Our ways are a step in the right direction but are not the ultimate answer toward curing petroleum addiction. Our goal is to set an example that there are alternatives to the gas pump, and people should not be frightened to explore them.”
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