Ross Benton

Gasoline tanker trucks circle through the Bonny Oaks Drive lot behind Benton Oil Co. 24 hours a day, seven days a week topping off their fuel load with ethanol.

The trucks getting the 10 percent mix of ethanol from Benton are supplying almost all the gas stations in East Tennessee, North Georgia, Northeast Alabama or western North Carolina, according to Benton.

“I’d say we sell between 95 to 98 percent of it,” said Ross Benton, owner and president of the Chattanooga company. Benton Oil also supplies gasoline to about 13 Midnite Oil stations in the area, a brand which it owns.

Staff Photo by Tim Barber -- Ross Benton, president of Benton Oil Co. on Bonny Oaks Drive, talks about adding ethanol to tanker trucks’ fuel loads before area deliveries.

Mr. Benton saw a need for an ethanol supplier in the Chattanooga area, so he began selling it in October. Six months later, he sells about 3 million gallons a month.

“There was a need in the Chattanooga area for someone to be a blender of ethanol,” he said. “We feel like this is the direction we need to be heading.”

Casey Mahoney, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, said unlike some other states, Tennessee does not have a law mandating that ethanol be added to fuel, but many area fuel pumps now have stickers informing drivers that the gas contains between 4 and 10 percent of ethanol.

Anything over a 4 percent mixture is required to have a sticker, Ms. Mahoney said.

Mr. Benton decided to begin supplying ethanol after reading a magazine article about a bio-diesel made from soybean oil.

“In October, there was no ethanol at any gas station in Chattanooga, but now, about 75 percent of the gasoline sold in the Chattanooga market has 10 percent ethanol,” he said. “When you look at what it is and what it does, it is hard to argue against it.”

Joanna Schroeder, communication director at the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, a nonprofit group in Omaha, Neb., dedicated to promoting ethanol fuel use, said ethanol boosts octane levels, reduces tail-pipe emissions and cuts gasoline consumption.

Without ethanol, gasoline prices would likely increase 15 percent, she said.

Ethanol is an environmentally friendly product and it is domestically produced, which Mr. Benton said is good for everyone.

“We need to wean ourselves off. We will never be completely free from our reliance on oil with the technology we have today. We cannot produce that much corn or soy beans, but it’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “If it is cleaning up the air and keeping jobs here, it’s a win-win.”