I've been following threads of people who are travelling and looking for oil en route. After two 3,000+ mi trips on SVO (2006 & 2008), I have some ideas.

1. fillup4free.com is a good idea but virtually worthless in it's current configuration.

2. Begging for oil on the forums is hit and miss but still the best chance to get filtered oil when travelling.

3. Absent a managed site for SVO exchange among travellers, an alternative is for travellers to set up their own network.

On my trips, out of 8 people who supplied me with oil, one came from fillup4free and the rest from forums. Of travellers I've supplied with oil on their trips, half have come from fillup4 free and the rest from forums. Many on fillup4free do not have PMs forwarded to their emails so the messages remain in the sender's outbox forever.

Contacts from the forums routinely require multiple PMs or posts before direct contact is made.

I'd like to invite people to form a small network to exchange oil when travelling. The premises of this network are:

1. The network is for people who are travelling, seperated by at least a distance equal to a range of fuel a traveller can carry.

2. The network is only for people who are currently producing filtered SVO and have oil to give as well as receive.

3. Each network would be small. 10 people should be able to cover the country. Members of each network will exchange direct contact information. Members will not exchange contact info outside each network.

There are bound to be details that need to be worked out among each network. For instance, a member might be willing to provide 20 gallons for a car to travel 600 miles but reluctant to provide a bus with 75 gallons to travel the same distance. Various details can be worked out in each network.

Anyone who is interested in forming a network starting from SW Florida, please send me a PM. Only people at least 600 miles away, please. My PMs are forwarded to my email. Exchanges will be limited to 30 gallons.

I don't mean for this post to sound exclusive but believe a small group will work better than a large one. Many little networks will work better than one big one.

-Charlie

I think it would be hard to go wrong with more people. But fillup4free is pretty useless so far.