Could Fried Food Save You Money at the Pump?

The sound of the fryer going means good food is about the hit the buffet for the folks that fill up these tables everyday. "We use about 110 pounds of this grease every week. We change it out every week," explains Chef Fatback of Mac's on Main.

But for one of Chef's customers, it sounded like something that could keep his Mercedes on the move. "This is the used grease that we get from our fryers. We put it back in the containers and this is where the good ecological green stuff goes," Chef says as he walks over to the car.

The restaurant used to dump their old oil in grease traps out back and it was whisked away every two weeks to, well, no one was sure quite where. Now they hand it over to run this baby. "We took a regular diesel Mercedes Benz, you know, older model and we made a couple of modifications to it," says Chef, "We went on the internet and got this little device right here called the heat exchanger... We put a 300 gallon tank in the trunk and this tank is specially modified for cooking oil."

For the past two months, they've had it running entirely off the used grease. And the environmental improvement doesn't stop there. "These are our Number 10 cans we use for our peaches for peach cobbler. We were throwing these cans away," he explains.

Now after a good scrub they're sent to be recycled, earning Mac's a little bit back for every batch. It all takes a little more time and effort, but for Chef it's worth it. "I'm gonna get a bumper sticker, I'm gonna put it right on the back: This car powered by Mac's on Main chicken grease," he laughs.