CARTHAGE, ILL. -- As the price of regular unleaded gasoline hovers just under $4 a gallon, some drivers in Carthage caught a break when the Hancock County Farm Bureau offered E-85 ethanol for 85-cents a gallon. It was all part of a promotion to tout the benefits of ethanol and its use.
Joe Zumwalt is the president of the Hancock County Farm Bureau and he said, "ethanol over the last 50 to 10 years has really picked up. We're seeing a total mixture in all of our fuels, 10 to 12 percent. But this is a special 85 percent blend of ethanol."
The promotion ran for three hours and during that time it was car after car after car pulling up to the pump and telling the attendant to fill it up. Drivers could get up to 10 gallons of the E-85 at the promotional price and many of them just decided to top off the tank. But with the E-85, your car has to run on the flex fuel option. Older cars and trucks aren't fitted to operate on the E-85 blend.
"I believe it's a great opportunity to use E85, not only do we produce the product in our own county and we're a rural area and it's promoting the product that we use for our agriculture industry. In today's economy, we take advantage of any significant savings that we can use," said Rusty Dowdall, who took advantage of the promotion.
This was the third year for the E-85 promotion. During the three hour promotion, about 1,000 gallons of the ethanol blend was pumped into cars and trucks.
Law's gas station in Carthage is the only station in Hancock County that offers E-85.
There is a station in Quincy as well as in Golden Illinois
You can log onto the E-85 website www.e85fuel.com for a complete listing of stations that sell the ethanol blended fuel.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKHQA