containing a percentage of corn oil, soybeans or animal fat. It can be used as a pure fuel or blended with petroleum. Biodiesel re- quires no new refueling infrastructure. “Possibly a simple integration of biofuels, such as biodiesel, would
work best for your fleet,” Bozic added. “Possibly there is a nearby al- ternative fuel station that your fleet could use, rather than incurring the high cost of building your own station for a fuel such as CNG. Alternative-fuel choices do not have to bust your budget.”
PARTNERSHIPS HELP PAY FOR INFRASTRUCTURE Erin Lake of Blue Bird Corp. agreed that school districts are
wise to partner with suppliers such as Ferrell Gas for CNG or Roush CleanTech for propane. “CNG is a more costly infrastructure to acquire than propane
because the tank has to be buried underground. With propane, many times the propane provider will provide infrastructure with a signed contract at no additional charge,” Lake said. “For a lot of school districts with strapped budgets, they can afford the propane unit but perhaps not the infrastructure, so this type of agreement really opens the doors.” Richard Kolodziej, president of NGVAmerica, said school dis-
tricts leaning toward CNG must consider whether they have the numbers to justify an on-site fueling station. “If you have a large enough fleet and you’re using enough fuel,
sign a contract with a CNG provider and they will put it in (for free),” he said. “With most school districts, that’s probably not going to be the situation because they buy one or two buses at a time.” Gerry Rineer, transportation supervisor for the Lower Marion
(Pa.) School District, said his department has two fueling stations at two high schools for their 58 CNG buses. “It’s obviously a big undertaking, but environmentally we feel
it’s the right thing to do,” said Rineer. “With the fast and easy fuel- ing, we pull up just like you would for a regular bus.” Kansas City Public Schools utilizes a time-fill arrangement for
overnight fueling, saving both time and personnel cost. Infra- structure is comprised of 35 time-fill dispensers, with dual hoses allowing each station to fuel two buses at a time. Steve Wayne of the Propane Education Research Council said
school districts can easily implement on-site propane-fueling systems, made up of a large tank and no-spill dispenser, by work- ing with local propane providers. “Tese dispensing systems are compact and easy to install, and
the installation cost is comparable to that of gas or diesel,” he added. Ron Latko, transportation director at Mesa (Ariz.) Unified
School District, made a commitment to propane with the instal- lation of an 18,000-gallon fuel tank. “Te construction for the large tank, with turnkey operation, taxes and everything, was just under $280,000,” he recalled. Portland (Ore.) Public Schools is in the process of building re-
fueling infrastructure, which was primarily funded by its vendor. “With our long history of running vehicles fueled by propane
autogas, we have successfully implemented on-site fueling sta- tions through the partnerships with our propane suppliers,” said Andy Leibenguth, Portland’s transportation director. ■
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