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Hey I am 15 and was thinking that I waould be able to start a business collectyion cooking oil and selling it to biodesiel manufactuers. What do I need to knwo or do to get started and is this something that will actually work. All advice would be greatly appriciated.
Most of us like to hombrew, so, unless you plan to give the oil to us for free, or next to nothing, why should we advise you? Seems to me that you will be trying to take the oil contracts that we use now.
Andrew 79 Rabbit B100 homebrew 03 Dodge 2500 B100 homebrew
Hi palladin727. Welcome to the site. You'd also, most definitely, need a vehicle and a driver's license. I'd ask local restaurants who takex care of their waste grease/oil.
Interesting question, but others have asked similar questions before, then seem to disapear. My guess is that they find out it doesn't work economically. Personally, I would be willing to pay a little more for my oil than it costs me to drive around and collect it myself. But then, I use my own homebrew B100 to drive around, so my driving expense is going to be a lot less than yours (unless you have a diesel and are already homebrewing. But if this were the case, you would probably be using all the oil you could find for yourself!) Not to mention that I would be really pissed off to the point of taking revenge if I found out that you are taking oil from any of my pickup points. I probably speak for all biodieselers on this point.
Another thing that you need to consider is the problem of how you will pickup, transport (from the oil producer as well as to your customers), and store all that oil. You will also find creative ways to spill it that you never knew existed, so will you have a place to do this that can tolerate the spills? (Your parents probably wont find this acceptable in their garage or backyard.) And if you should spill it on the road, hefty fines will follow. If you start doing this, then the restraunts will depend on you to take care of their WVO for them, and wont apreciate it if you let them down because you decided to have a normal teenage life for a while. So you can't get started on this, and then just dissapear after you got in trouble for turning a wrong valve one day and filling your parents backyard with WVO, or because you and your girlfriend are going backpacking in Yosemite for the summer.
Since you will be doing this comercially, there will be laws you will have to comply with, probably concerning licensing (expensive), proper equipment (more expense), comercial insurance for your vehicle (also expensive, and probably not available at your age), inspections (hassles and expensive fines if you are not perfect), etc.
Just about the time you get this all up and running, most of the homebrewers that have recently started out because of the recently high diesel prices are going to have the novelty of making thier own fuel wear off, and figure out that it is easier and less time consuming to just get a part time job and use the extra income to pay for the higher diesel prices. Then you will lose your customers (and still have the responsibility of picking up and dealing with all that oil!)
I know this is all negative, but sometimes reality is a negative thing. I think this is why no one else seems to be doing this. But, hey, if it works out, I'm sure there are homebrewers with small diesel cars that don't care to haul around a 100 gallon super sucker to collect their own oil. If you are in the right area, and can get through all the other chalenges, maybe there is a niche market for you out there! Good luck to you!
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