Environmental fees

[encorehunter]

I took my truck to the dealership for warranty work and decided to get an oil change, air filter and the fuel filters changed. I knew it was going to be expensive, but sometimes time is more important. A little over $700 for all. What got me irritated was a $75 "environmental fee" for disposing of the oil and filters. This was at a Phil Long dealership in Trinidad, working on a '19 Ram 3500 with a 6.7 cummins.

[kidicarus13]

They call then stealerships for a reason.

[NFATrustGuy]

About a month ago, I changed the oil, oil filter, fuel filter, and air filter in my 2005 Ram 3500 for about $150 and 30 minutes of my time… all in.

Ouch.

I couldn’t afford half of what I have if a paid retail for everything.

[beast556]

Holy shit, 700$ thats straight robbery.

[Jer]

I keep a spreadsheet of how much money I save from not paying for gas and oil changes. It looks like I'm going to have to dramatically increase my cost of oil changes so the data aligns w/reality. I think I had $50 for an oil change. It seems as though this data is very outdated from this thread. I may double it.

[Rooskibar03]

I keep a spreadsheet of how much money I save from not paying for gas and oil changes. It looks like I'm going to have to dramatically increase my cost of oil changes so the data aligns w/reality. I think I had $50 for an oil change. It seems as though this data is very outdated from this thread. I may double it.

You can’t buy your own oil and filter anymore for $50 bucks for most vehicles let alone pay someone to do it.

[BPTactical]

Environmental Fee’s
Just another means of fleecing the consumer out of their money.
Curious just where those fee’s end up.

Sorta like the Plastic bag fee- 10 cents per bag, out of which 6 cents goes to the local municipality and the remaining 4 cents goes to the retailer.

Just how is that saving the planet?

[eddiememphis]

The three gallons of waste oil has to be dealt with according to EPA standards.

The dealer has to pay a company to collect the waste oil. That means a guy with a haz-mat endorsement on his CDL, driving a specialized rig to suck it out of the EPA approved container. The driver is likely making a decent wage and the waste oil company has all it's bills to pay as well, regarding transportation and disposal.

$75 is likely excessive but the shop is paying thousands of dollars to deal with the waste. Someone has to pay for it.

[BushMasterBoy]

The waste oil is sent to the refinery. Same place they take the crude oil. Then we buy it again.

[Jer]

You can?t buy your own oil and filter anymore for $50 bucks for most vehicles let alone pay someone to do it.

I've been out of the oil changin' game for 5 or 6 years now (thankfully) so my spreadsheet figures are obviously outdated. When I used to do it I would use mobile one motor oil that I'd get BOGO rebates on and factory filters from Kia and Toyota that were only a couple of bucks each. In all they were pretty reasonably priced using high quality materials.

Side note: even though my cost estimates for oil changes (and probably gas prices) are woefully below actual costs, we've still saved north of $16k on gas & oil changes alone driving EVs. That's a pretty high number and we were previously a very low gas consumption household since I work from home and my wife has only a short commute 4 days a week on average. It's not the perfect solution for everyone but it's been WAY better for us. Topics like this are but one example why.