News article for propane (heating) users

[durablend]

There was a thread last week where people were comparing prices and I'd mentioned that prices often vary based on how much one's annual usage happens to be. I just happened to come across a recent news article on Google which confirms it's an industrywide practice

http://business.mainetoday.com/news/051009propane.shtml

Take note of the price difference between somebody who just cooks with it versus someone who heats a large house.

[dweller]

1. so, what's the point of conservation again?

or insulating more, or adding solar or other energy mising qualities if the propane dealers are going to charge more if you use less??

bastas.
dp

[B Calm]

2. Piss on them! I'll just heat my house all winter with wood.

[jmowreader]

3. You should try being an industrial user!

We burn a lot of propane at work--we have two propane-powered forklifts. To fuel them, we own 34 50-pound cylinders. This is enough fuel to last us two weeks.

There are two propane suppliers in this area. The one we were dealing with would come to the store with the kind of propane truck you fill a home tank with and fill all of them. The one we deal with now comes to the store and exchanges all of our empty tanks for ones they fill at their central plant. This is saving us 25 percent at least on our fuel costs for two reasons--the cylinder truck is less expensive to run than a propane truck, and it's less expensive for them to dispense the propane directly from their storage tank to the forklift cylinders than it is to dispense it into a propane truck, then into the cylinders. The hazmat rules on a truck with 50 cylinders on it are different and less expensive to comply with than the ones for a thousand-gallon propane truck.

The people I really feel sorry for are the ones who have a large fleet of propane-powered vehicles...like our local police department, who runs about a hundred propane-powered cop cars. They're REALLY taking it in the shorts.