JHZR2
Staff member
Originally Posted By: sayjac
My impression was that OP's question related whether oil sold at Walmart under a manufacturers name was somehow different than that sold at other outlets such as auto parts stores. It's clear from the post that the question implies that the Wally product is somehow inferior to the oil product(s) sold elsewhere. My answer was no.
Now as for the apparently inevitable Wally bashing that enters with such a discussion, my answer to that would be, if one doesn't like Wally's business practices, shop elsewhere. In a free country it's very simple, one can buy from the retailer of their choice for whatever reason. The same goes if one believes the same labeled oil product not be the same if sold at Wally. That said, I don't agree with that conclusion.
For national brand products, maybe/maybe not. A VOA of a bottle of this or that oil bought in quarts from another store versus a 5 qt bottle from wally may provide insight.
I WOULD be very scared of their store brand stuff, as it is likely formulated to a different price point and quality than national brand stuff. You see this with anything else from plastic bags to pants to tires to whatever else, why not wally world oil?
Now that said, if the majors have only two or three blending sites nationally, and say wally constitutes 30% market share and is exerting extreme price pressure, it could make sense to provide something that is "good enough" in a wally bottle that is separate. We see that for other stuff, why not oil? That said, it may then require a separate MSDS, PDS, API cert, etc. which may or may not make sense... However, the blenders surely also know how much tradespace they have. Pennzoil removes x% of sludge? Well maybe the wal mart 5qt pennzoil only removes n-5% of sludge, which they know will still be OK by API, but not at the quality point they desire. They meet price point and all is well.
Who knows. Only way to determine is to run the experiment... and didnt the supertech gear oil experiment show it wasnt up to snuff?
My impression was that OP's question related whether oil sold at Walmart under a manufacturers name was somehow different than that sold at other outlets such as auto parts stores. It's clear from the post that the question implies that the Wally product is somehow inferior to the oil product(s) sold elsewhere. My answer was no.
Now as for the apparently inevitable Wally bashing that enters with such a discussion, my answer to that would be, if one doesn't like Wally's business practices, shop elsewhere. In a free country it's very simple, one can buy from the retailer of their choice for whatever reason. The same goes if one believes the same labeled oil product not be the same if sold at Wally. That said, I don't agree with that conclusion.
For national brand products, maybe/maybe not. A VOA of a bottle of this or that oil bought in quarts from another store versus a 5 qt bottle from wally may provide insight.
I WOULD be very scared of their store brand stuff, as it is likely formulated to a different price point and quality than national brand stuff. You see this with anything else from plastic bags to pants to tires to whatever else, why not wally world oil?
Now that said, if the majors have only two or three blending sites nationally, and say wally constitutes 30% market share and is exerting extreme price pressure, it could make sense to provide something that is "good enough" in a wally bottle that is separate. We see that for other stuff, why not oil? That said, it may then require a separate MSDS, PDS, API cert, etc. which may or may not make sense... However, the blenders surely also know how much tradespace they have. Pennzoil removes x% of sludge? Well maybe the wal mart 5qt pennzoil only removes n-5% of sludge, which they know will still be OK by API, but not at the quality point they desire. They meet price point and all is well.
Who knows. Only way to determine is to run the experiment... and didnt the supertech gear oil experiment show it wasnt up to snuff?
