Which also makes sense. The bosses hands are clean (literally and figuratively) while the guys they’re exploiting get dirty - so all the attention is on the dirty guy. Figuring out who’s behind it all takes too much work anyways.
For legit work, sure, that’d be good (assuming that was even a consistent wage, which is doubtful). But when every outing represents multiple chances of a felony theft arrest - because it involves hitting multiple restaurants - it’s not so great. (Especially when any criminal sentence is based on a value for the goods which is many times what one is being paid.) And it’s not that much more than what a legit grease driver would make in a day, either.
Apparently people were being prosecuted for grease theft since at least the '80s, when the used oil was worth a small fraction of what it is now (and recycled almost exclusively for animal feed), even though restaurants were giving it away to collection companies (which made prosecution a bit iffy). Though the people collecting the grease “illegally” were directly selling it to the recyclers, so they were making potentially more money than guys like this poor schmo.
Cooking grease and oils can be used in a diesel engine, if they are filtered and heater to over 200 F. They don’t burn as clean as biodiesel and may cause some engine damage long term, but, in a pinch, they work. (look up Veggie kits for diesel engines).
I make biodiesel for a living. Made and sold over 4 MM gallons last year. Our main feedstock is Choice white grease, (bacon fat mostly) but it also encompasses chicken fat, beef tallow and other animal fats. Current cost for filtered, clean choice white grease is around $0.25 per pound, delivered. There are 7.6 pounds per gallon for CWG, just to give you a monetary scale of the business.
For stuff we used to put in the landfill 30 years ago, turning it into fuel makes sense. Biodiesel use also reduces CO2 generation by around 50% when burned in a modern diesel engine. The downside is it increases NOX by around 5 - 10% at the same time. NOX scrubbers are becoming common on diesel rigs to help beat this problem.
My workplace has a pretty good setup going on: They sell a lot of fried theme park food, generating a lot of used oil and grease. They also operate several steam locomotives that used to run on regular diesel. Now they just send the used grease out for processing and buy back the biodiesel as a significant discount.
So go ahead, eat those greasy corndogs guilt-free!
But if you were working on this story wouldn’t the juicy bit be that the guy arrested named so-and-so as Mr Boss. Mr Boss lives at such-and-such and owns the following businesses. Mr Boss was contacted for comment but declined to respond. Mr. Boss has had the following past legal issues per public court records.
I’d be very surprised if he was talking, though. I was just reading about another grease theft conviction where the guy who was convicted failed to mention, throughout his trial, that it wasn’t actually him driving his truck that day (someone else borrowed it). Better to do the time than snitch.
I understand that and wouldn’t blame the driver for refusing to name who his boss was. Saying he refuses to name his boss would still make for a better story than mentioning there is a boss coordinating a multi-state theft ring and then not even attempting to address the question of who it might be.
It’s a good idea to secure your grease bins not only for the threat of loss, but to prevent unlawful disposal of unwanted motor oil or, much worse, controlled substances like PCB transformer oil. The grease from these bins may be recycled into animal feed and eventually into dairy or meat products.
It’ll add up quick. You figure even smaller restaurants that don’t fry much tend to have at least 2 fryers holding at least 5 gallons a piece. Last place I worked had 4. Change the oil at least once a week, and you’re filling a 55 gallon drum in 3 weeks.
And any place doing a lot of frying has more or bigger fryers and is changing the oil more often. So you’re filling up multiple drums in a week.
$.25/gallon seems low to me. Don’t recall what we were getting but it was more than that. I wonder if they were getting a lower price cause it was under the table.
You’d think the site foreman would notice… but I’ve seen stuff like that happen from time to time.
Somebody needs to make an appointment with their liability insurer.
I had a TDI Beetle and did a bunch of research into making my own biodiesel for it. Every source told me I’d be able to get used cooking oil for free from any number of restaurants. Not so! Once used oil became a commodity every restaurant had an outfit that bought it from them, and they kept it in locked containers outside. I was quite disillusioned.
