[F350Lariat]

I picked up a regional newspaper today with an article about farm diesel that sounds pretty painful.

The Washington State Patrol pulled over a "Street Sweeper" owned by a Washington company and tested the fuel. The test revealed the vehicle was running red-dyed farm fuel. The state issued a subpoena to check the company's records on their fuel storage tank and found the last time they purchased taxed fuel ($0.31/gallon road tax) was in 2003. The state estimated their usage at 98,000 gallons and assessed $1,023,000 in fines and back taxes. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

Like they always say there are only two things certain in life, "Death and Taxes". Or maybe it should be revised to say, "Death, Taxes, and Fines" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/depressed.gif

 

[Bullrack]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

That souds like a setup to me. A street sweeper should still be considered an off highway vehicle. I know it is classified as off road in Texas and Louisiana. I would fight that all the way to the Supreme Court. If the vehicle does not have to be registered or licensed in any state, then it should be considered off road/non-taxable for fuel anyway. There was a guy in Tx. a few years back who was dip tested at a cattle auction and failed. He was fined rather large for this also. Of course, he fought back and won in court. He had fuel reciepts for every week the day he travelled to this auction. He also had a log book of some sort that he kept to a tee and the mileages showed his fuel purchases. Anyway, somehow he proved that he was running farm tags while staying on his ranch and purchasing taxed fuel when he went to these sales. It all showed that what the trooper was finding was actual residual off road fuel. I remember it was dropped and this guy actually tried to countersue by stating profiling because he had farm tags. I think he then ended up paying a much smaller fine and finally shutting his big mouth. I do not think this would work today. And they are profiling as my farm tagged truck is dip checked pretty often at the sale barns.

 

[LRH]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

Is this a purpose built machine like say a road grader or right of way tractor ect?, or a street sweeper built on a standard truck cab & chassis? I would think in most states IF it requires a license plate then it can't burn off road fuel. Some states laws do vary.

 

[toalpi]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

Search the news for "Firm fined over fuel taxes". Or go to kitsapsun.com If it wants you to sign up, just click on "home" and you can get around.

 

[F350Lariat]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

I've seen a few of their vehicles around. It is a trucked based chassis with the sweeper unit installed. I do not know what other types of trucks they run, but it is a business.

 

[Tallavana]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

A good question would be, how long does the residue remain in the tank. I ran off road diesel most of last year. I would hope that by now it would have flushed itself out.

 

[Roadfrog]

I'm not familiar with your laws (we don't have the same ones up here with relation to "off road fuel"). However, isn't untaxed fuel essentially for farm implements?

 

[olddieseldude]

[ QUOTE ]
...isn't untaxed fuel essentially for farm implements?

[/ QUOTE ]

Enitities that pay their taxes directly to the government can run untaxed fuel. At a truck stop where I buy fuel there is only one taxed pump all the rest are untaxed with vehicles like tri-axes, over the road trucks, emergency road service trucks, etc all lined up in the untaxed lines. They probably pay taxes on a quarterly basis or the like.

 

[Parrothead]

[ QUOTE ]
I picked up a regional newspaper today with an article about farm diesel that sounds pretty painful.

The Washington State Patrol pulled over a "Street Sweeper" owned by a Washington company and tested the fuel. The test revealed the vehicle was running red-dyed farm fuel. The state issued a subpoena to check the company's records on their fuel storage tank and found the last time they purchased taxed fuel ($0.31/gallon road tax) was in 2003. The state estimated their usage at 98,000 gallons and assessed $1,023,000 in fines and back taxes. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

Like they always say there are only two things certain in life, "Death and Taxes". Or maybe it should be revised to say, "Death, Taxes, and Fines" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/depressed.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

A street sweeper by itself used 98,000 gallons of fuel since sometime in '03?
C'mon! No way. At 5 MPG that would be sweeping a half-million miles of street.
I'm speculating that they must have been using that untaxed fuel in other vehicles, too. That's probably what the state's beef is really about.

..

 

[rickeg]

Uh, yeah, it's a street sweeping COMPANY...All their rigs were using it.

 

[WUNDERHOOT]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

 

[LRH]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

The truck would have to run tax paid diesel, but it is ok for the power unit powering the sweep unit to use off road. One of my customers operates a fleet of GM/Isuzu N-series and some GM C-5500/6500, and a few IH 4700's sweeping large industrial areas and they sometimes use red fuel in the 3 and 4 cyl diesels operating the brushes/pumps, but not in the trucks. Sounds like the person operating the fleet in this discussion was doing the same and the temptation became to great, and started using it in everything.

 

[Parrothead]

[ QUOTE ]
Uh, yeah, it's a street sweeping COMPANY...All their rigs were using it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean rigs like this one,
[image]http://www.elginsweeper.com/broombear/images/DSCF1541.jpg[/image]
that might have been driving on the roads using untaxed fuel when they *weren't* sweeping?

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

 

[xtremefreerider]

Been trying to tell the boss that this kind of thing can happen but he doesn't believe it......Maybe thats what you get from a PhD running a ranch.....

 

[F350Lariat]

No. The street sweeper did not use 98,000 gallons all by itself. I looked up the company, Action Services Corporation, on the internet. They are located in Bremerton and Bainbridge Island, Washington close to Seattle. The company is listed under street cleaning services so I assume they run a fleet of sweepers. I checked the web link to the article posted earlier. The company's sweeper was operating in Olympia, Washington and stopped by the Washington State Patrol for a routine commercial vehicle inspection which included testing the fuel.
The trooper found red-dyed fuel and the subsequent investigation led back to the company's records.

By my calculations, 98,000 gallons at $0.31/gallon = $30,380 additional fuel charges. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

98,000 gallons at $1,023,000 back taxes and fines results in $10.42/gallon. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

The $0.31/gallon looks like a better deal. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[BigDaddyT]

30,380 at 31cents.

 

[F350Lariat]

Thanks! Fixed the math error.

 

[ta152h0]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

Here in my town ( Auburn ) I have seen those mounted on an ISUZU truck

 

[myf350]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

Is the truck plated? Where I work we own a couple Ottawa yard dogs that are titled as "off-road" from the manufacturer, and do not have plates and can run off road fuel. There are also other models of the same truck that are titled as on-road, and by just walking up to them and looking at them you may not see any difference. The on-road units are more DOT compliant, lights, brake systems and such.
One would assume that since a sweepers primary use is "on road" that it would be plated, but then again it is a purpose built machine. Pretty much this has been said already. This could be argued either way, but I believe that if it has a license plate it is on-road, end of argument.

 

[brahamfireman]

Re: The Tax Man Cometh when the Red-Dyed Fuel Did Not Fade Away

my thought is that its not a mode of transportation therefor it shouldn't be required to burn on road fuel, and being that it maintains the road in a sort then it should realy be exempt from haveing to burn on road fuel.

Diesel Rod