The City of Scottsdale, AZ has had a long history of alternative fuel use dating all the way back to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) use in 1982. Biodiesel made its way to Scottsdale in 2003 with a grant for the Downtown Trolley service to upgrade its seven trolleys to alternative fuels. The grant helped the city place a 2,000 gallon tank at a public fueling site where other city vehicles often fueled.

Selling the idea of change was the hardest aspect of implementing biodiesel in Scottsdale, according to Danny Johnson, Fleet Management Director for the City of Scottsdale. Johnson said people don’t like change, even if it is for the better, and the city had to overcome operator and maintenance staff resistance to change.

“At first, every problem we had biodiesel was getting the blame,” Johnson said. “If the windshield wipers on a trash truck didn’t work, it’s because we had switched to biodiesel.”

Those fears were overcome quickly once everyone got used to the change, and now any vehicle that has a diesel engine operates on various blends of biodiesel in the City of Scottsdale’s fleet. Fire trucks, police SUVs, garbage trucks, road graders, service trucks, and all other diesel are using biodiesel.

For Johnson and the City of Scottsdale, the benefits of biodiesel outweighed the uncertainty of change.

Summer 2010