When I was a kid, a pilot my mom was dating had one in his hangar. I agree.
Yes, this is what I was thinking of.
dragsters: nitromethane
other race cars: mostly gasoline/alcohol mix. A few are pure gasoline or pure methanol.
off-road vehicles: mostly gasoline, except military field vehicles. They use diesel, with few exceptions.
jet engines: use JP4 and JP5 which are gasoline/kerosene blends.
There were tractors that ran on kerosene. I found an item about a fellow still running a 1970 kerosene tractor. I don’t think there are enough kerosene tractors still running to justify a gas station pump, but could imagine the motivation to pull one out might have lagged.
When I lived in Maryland, the mobile home I owned had a kerosene furnace and more than once, the fuel tank ran low during the evening on a cold winter night. The gas station just down the street had a kerosene pump; five or ten gallons would suffice until morning when the delivery truck could come by. There were several MH parks in the area, many of the trailers were older and probably had kerosene furnaces.
Helpful tip: if you find yourself in a similar situation and have to get late-at-night kerosene, let the fuel settle for a couple hours or the tank sediment might clog the furnace nozzle and the fumes will chase you out of your home.
Kerosene has a number of uses, consumer use of it is probably at all-time lows, but in areas where it wasn’t that long ago that it was widely used, it’s not unusual to see some kerosene pumps at gas stations. They aren’t totally uncommon to see where I live in Virginia, they certainly are not at every gas station, or even most, but I know of at least a few I can go to fill up on kerosene.
Go back to say, 1965 and I’d wager throughout the Midwest and a lot of the Mid-Atlantic, kerosene heaters and small furnaces would have been very common, kerosene lamps would have been just as common, and kerosene powered tractors while well on their way out by then, would have still been common enough to justify having a few pumps here and there. There are other less common uses of kerosene, as a solvent, pest control, firestarter etc.
I’m going to guess what kept enough consumer interest in them to keep pumps going into the 21st century in some areas are likely kerosene heaters, if you use one regularly, they go through kerosene at a decent clip. For camping lamps and general purpose having lamps in areas without electricity, the propane powered lamp has almost completely replaced the kerosene lamp–although Coleman and a few other outdoor brands still sell kerosene lamps, it’s much more limited. Coleman’s website lists like 20 different kinds of propane lantern they sell, but only one kerosene.
Kerosene is in the broad family of Mid-Distillates which include the main components for diesel fuel.
I have seen the rebrands Kerosene, Jet-A, and Diesel P-60 come from the same tank.
Jet-A would have more stringent requirements of certification, filtering and transport, but it’s the same as Kerosene. And we would ship Diesel P-60 up north, where it’s used as a diesel motor fuel.
Jet Fuel is essentially kerosene.
Are you near Lake Michigan or another area with lots of boating activity? Looks like it’s commonly used for small outboard motors.
One thing not mentioned yet is kerosene for use in herbicides and pesticides. My dad always had a gallon or two of kerosene on his farm for use in oil lamps and for mixing up batches of weed killer or bug killer in his sprayer, which also doubled as an improvised flamethrower for burning tent caterpillar nests out of his walnut trees.
One of my local gas stations does fuel delivery to the tank stands farmers use for refilling their tractors. They offer a variety of fuels, including kerosene, at their self-serve pumps. They are also one of the few places I can find E85 fuel (85% ethanol 15% gasoline).
Note that you can buy kerosene in one gallon or two and half gallon containers at hardware stores, home supply (Home Depot…) stores, farm supply stores or Walmart. But this is going to cost $9 to $10/gallon or so. When you buy it in bulk like at the gas station it will be maybe $4 or less/gallon. The higher cost is due to the cost of containers, more complicated supply chain and higher retail markups. The more expensive prices are fine if you use a gallon or two a year–but not if you use a few hundred–as you would need for home heating.
Diesel fuel and home heating oil are essentially the same thing.
Rudolph Diesel originally ran his engine on kerosene, so you may be thinking of that. He also experimented with a lot of other fuels, but kerosene ended up becoming his primary fuel during his development of the diesel engine. He even experimented with using coal dust as a fuel (spoiler - it didn’t work very well).
In the early 20th century, diesel fuels weren’t standardized, and diesel fuels containing gasoline, kerosene, and various cheap oils were common. Basically, the main criteria for what went into diesel fuel was whatever wasn’t being taxed at the time. IIRC, diesel fuel was finally standardized after WWII.
As was already said upthread, kerosene and diesel fuel are kinda close to each other. Kerosene is lighter and has slightly less energy per gallon than diesel fuel. Some diesel engines can run just fine on kerosene. Others can’t. Because kerosene is lighter it doesn’t provide as much lubrication, which can cause issues with some diesel fuel pumps.
Some people will mix kerosene in with their diesel fuel in cold weather as this can help diesel fuel to be used in colder temperatures before having problems. This may help to explain why kerosene is popular in gas stations in Michigan but not in Texas.
I’ve known people to do that with a standard heating oil furnace. You wouldn’t want to run it for a long time on kerosene, but a day or two apparently doesn’t do it any harm – or at any rate, didn’t do any harm to the models in question.
I expect it’s got more to do with kerosene heaters, though, in use in sheds etc. used as workshops during the winter, for emergency use, and occasionally in greenhouses.
Or there could be a lot of early- to mid- century tractors around.
Here are a couple of graphics that help understand how each of the fuels is created by cracking the hydrocarbon molecules (from basically the same source)…
Also possible; though in this area the mid-20th-century tractors around (and there are a lot of them) generally run on gasoline. But what models of tractors are common depends a whole lot on where you are. (Says the person with two 1950’s Olivers in what’s mostly, when it comes to old tractors, Ford country.)
The garage at the end of the street had a pump for dispensing kerosene in the 1960s. You brought your own can, put two shillings in the slot and pulled the lever and it pumped a (Imperial) gallon. Father used it mostly for lighting bonfires, and, I suppose, degreasing stuff.
The Abrams tank runs on anything flammable.
And if diesel isn’t kerosene, what are they both? I had thought that both diesel and kerosene were primarily hexane.
Old story: In the 1950’s someone in New England imported a diesel-powered Mercedes automobile. The governor of the state called him and asked where he was buying his diesel fuel. Just to check up that the state was getting the fuel tax.
It has a multifuel engine, it can burn mogas in a shortage situation, but in practice it’s always a diesel fuel to simplify maintenance and logistics. Now I’m actually reading that they’ve switched from diesel #2 to JP8 to further simplify logistics. I don’t think the Army uses any gasoline vehicles anymore other than strictly on-road vehicles.
Technically what’s sold as “diesel” is diesel #2, and kerosene is diesel #1. Kerosene is a lighter fraction, but both of them contain hydrocarbons in the C10-C16 range, rather heavier than hexane.
In kerosene vs. diesel #2, how cold does it get there?
However, as we already briefly touched on, you do have to be a bit more careful about the use of #2 diesel in cold temperatures. When the temperature drops, #2 has a tendency to thicken into an almost gel-like state, which can cause hard starts, stalling and other issues.
When I was growing up, we used kerosene (bought from a pump, but on the side of the station, not the island) and used it as a parts cleaning solvent.
And speaking of jet fuel, you can burn most anything in a turbine aircraft engine, at least in the short term. Even leaded gas, back in the day, thought unleaded causes less engine maintenance when you go back to jet fuel.