Winter Additive and Do We Really Need It?

As winter weather rolls in truck drivers have to deal with the issue of fuel gelling. For those who do not know what it is, fuel gelling is the process of thickening in diesel fuel as the weather gets colder. Fuel gelling can cause your fuel filters to plug up. If this happens your truck will not start.

Many truck manufacturers warn drivers to not use additive because most trucks already come equipped with cold weather combatting system. In those cases using additive will harm the after treatment system. We sat down with Greg Sullivan our Senior Truck Technician to find out what steps to take to deal with the colder weather in our trucks. Greg says,

“I did some research on it, and I found that all the fuel we buy for our trucks during the winter months have been treated with additive already and come winterized prior to purchase. If you purchase fuel from Love’s, TA, or Petro it is going to come already treated during the winter months. So we really do not need to add diesel fuel additive. All of our trucks are also equipped with heaters that heat the fuel and prevent fuel gelling, and all of our trucks come with ParkSmart heaters or have an optimized idle feature that help start and stop the truck in colder months without problems.”

Correspondent: Greg Sullivan

Edited by: Daniel Chung