Is diesel used for the locomotives taxed? I mean do they have to pay Federal and State taxes on fuel like semi trucks and passenger vehicles have to? I saw a MOW truck the other day filling up with diesel while I was putting gas in my truck.
I would see if they didn’t have to pay taxes because they are operating on their own property most of the time.
If the trains ran on the roads that are funded by tax dollars than they would have to pay tax on fuel. Mow trucks that travel over roads will have to pay taxes on fuel. There is a color difference between taxed and untaxed fuel. The fines for using untaxed fuel on the road is very severe. A local construction company was forced out of business for using untaxed fuel and one company rep was jailed. Untaxed fuel is colored with a red dye where taxed fuel is almost clear. Maintenance managers must be very careful when using additives that it does not change the color. The company I work for tests every tanker of fuel that fills our tanks for the proper fuel. We use over 5000 gallons of taxed fuel and sometimes 15000 gallons of untaxed fuel every day. With so many shipments of fuel it is easy to mix up so we check and recheck.
Pete
Some places may dye their taxed diesel green. Flying J does that.
RJ
The green dye in taxed diesel denotes a fuel that has a percentage of Biofuel in it. Biofuel has a very short shelf life and any distributor must agitate it regularly to keep unwanted solids and moss to form. We tried a 10% bio fuel mix once and had premature injector failures in all of our Komatsu common rail fuel systems. Any equipment that is infrequently used had fuel filter blockage and fuel line hardening and cracking. The Bio fuel broke down easily and caused smoking and hard starting if the engine was not run for a couple weeks.
Pete
When I worked for a medium-size trackwork contractor 20 - 35 years ago, we had our own fuel island and tanks, including diesel. All of the diesel was the same color - slightly brownish - and hence tax-paid. However, we had to keep track of the gallons that were used for off-road use, such as for the various Caterpillar machines and other construction equipment, the bigger diesel-powered ‘on-track’ equipment, air compressors, oiling paving tools and dump truck bodies, etc. The gals in the accounting dept. would then file for a refund of the tax that had been automatically included in the sale price = our cost from the supplier of the fuel that was used off-road, and I believe that a company official had to certify and swear that the claimed refund amount was correct.
The truck drivers also had to keep track of how many miles they ran in each state - we regularly operated in 4, sometimes 6 - as they crossed each border and report that as well, so that the various truck registration taxes and fuel taxes (and maybe other taxes ?) could be apportioned correctly between the states.
It wasn’t a huge task or burden as the system had been set up many years ago and we already needed most of that kind of information anyway to track the fuel used by each piece and class of equipment to monitor its/ their actual operating costs, etc., but it probably used about 1 clerk for most of a day each month.