Ben Hagerty pumped gas into his Ford Escape at the BFS convenience store on Fairchance Road on Saturday, May 25.A few minutes later, while driving along W.Va. 857, he noticed his accelerator wasn’t working, and then his engine failure light flashed.
“Luckily, I made it home,” Hagerty said.
After talking to his wife — who had noticed social media posts about a diesel fueling mixup at the Cheat Lake BFS — Hagerty realized he was among the motorists who unknowingly put the wrong fuel into their vehicles. “We put two and two together,” he said.
Leading up to the Memorial Day weekend, the driver of a fuel truck reportedly pumped diesel into the tank for 87-octane gasoline, and 87-octane into the diesel tank.
BFS acknowledged a mixup.
“We did have an incident on Saturday May 25th in which we had a driver error with a gas drop,” Hayley Graham, BFS director of marketing wrote in a statement to The Dominion Post. “The customers who reached out to us that were effected are being contacted by our insurance company to settle their claims quickly. We apologize for the inconvenience that this caused our customers.”
BFS did not respond to requests for further comment. There is nothing on the BFS website concerning the May 25 incident, how it happened or who to contact. The number of motor vehicles, including boats impacted remains unclear.
Hagerty had his vehicle towed to a Ford dealership, where his engine was cleaned and the sparkplugs replaced. BFS’s insurance company paid the $1,300 bill.
“I got the car back and it seems to be driving OK,” Hagerty said.
It is not known if an outside vendor was responsible for the fueling mistake. BFS Petroleum currently operates a network of 18 petroleum bulk fuel plants throughout West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, according to the BFS website.
Gas engines can’t combust diesel, which is heavier than gasoline. Diesel will sink to the bottom of a gas tank resulting in the injection of both gas and diesel into the intake manifold or cylinder.
The partially burned diesel leaves deposits on engine pistons, valves and spark plugs, according to BellPerformance.com. The cylinders can become hydro-locked, which can cause a blown head gasket. If unburned diesel fuel makes its way into the exhaust system, it will ignite in the catalytic convertor. The fire will plug the holes in the catalyst, destroying it and leaving drivers with a repair job that could cost thousands.
BFS, a privately held Morgantown company, has 63 convenience stores throughout West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. Launched in 1974 as an agriculture business when Marshall Bishop bought a Southern States store in Bruceton Mills, BFS reportedly employs more than 2,000 full-and part-time workers.
