Originally Posted By: DBMaster
It's very easy to get TT gas around here at competitive pricing. QT has the largest, busiest stations in the area and they are everywhere. TT gas costs less than a half-cent more to offer (for the oil company, that is) than non-TT gas. As was stated some time ago on this forum, Costco has joined the TT program. Their gas met the standards prior to that, but I guess they wanted the "seal of approval." Costco is not in a convenient location for me and there are almost always lines at the pumps. Until we're in a 1970's style gas crisis I'm not waiting in line to buy gas, no matter how cheap it is.
The situation at Costco was a little bit more nuanced. The stations that had the "Clean Power" setup were easily meeting the TT standard, and I'm guessing their additive manufacturer (Lubrizol) already had test results to back that up and to submit to TT if and when Costco chose to participate. However, Costco had a different system than others, where they didn't have the additive metered at the fuel depot into the delivery tankers, but rather had the additive delivered directly to each gas station and a system to meter the additive when fuel was delivered. Their biggest issue was that the Top Tier requirements are that all gas stations of a certain brand must meet the standard. Some of the stations hadn't been equipped and were apparently still receiving fuel with a minimum level of generic additive introduced at the fuel depot.
It must also have been interesting when Arco went for Top Tier. The way the Arco sale to Tesoro went down, the actual operation of Arco stations was eventually split up, with BP licensing the rights to Arco in several markets but Tesoro having the rights in all other markets. They must have gotten into some agreement about all stations meeting the Top Tier standard, although it might be possible for each company to use a different additive.
There was also BP, which refused to participate in Top Tier for years, even though they had a high standard and was directly recommended by BMW for meeting their fuel system cleanliness requirements. In that case they just didn't want to play ball for whatever reason.