NAFTC Headquarter's Instructor, Rich Cregar, traveled to Charleston, West Virginia's Capital City, on August 30 and conducted four biodiesel conferences and workshops.

The day began at the administrative offices of the Boone County school District in Madison, WV where Mr. Cregar delivered a two hour biodiesel workshop to the superintendents, directors and transportation supervisors of both the Boone and Logan County school districts. The state of West Virginia offers generous financial rebates to school districts that use a blend of B-20 biodiesel. More and more counties are turning to biodiesel for their school bus fleets as a result. Mr. Cregar's workshop was intended to introduce them to the fuel and its properties and answer their questions about fueling, maintenance and safety issues.

Boone and Logan county school officials taking part in a biodiesel workshop.

Following this meeting, Mr. Cregar traveled to a luncheon meeting with top executives of the Amherst Corp. & Madison Coal & Supply, Inc. The Amherst Company operates a fleet on barges of the Kanawha River which uses over 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel per week. They are interested in converting to a biodiesel blend and have many technical questions which Mr. Cregar fielded during a two hour discussion.

One of the Amherst Company barges.

Mr. Cregar then traveled to the headquarters of Walker Equipment Co, the local distributor for Caterpillar Industrial Products. Mr. Cregar presented the NAFTC Biodiesel workshop to several company executives and an official from Caterpillar. A lively discussion ensued about the future of biodiesel as both an on and off road fuel and the role it will play when Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel enters the market next year.

Finally, Mr. Cregar traveled to the campus of West Virginia State University where he again presented the NAFTC workshop "Biodiesel Basics" to a public audience in the Hamblin Science Auditorium. The session began at 7:00 PM. Interest and questions were so great that the session lasted well beyond the scheduled two hours. At 10:30 PM, the last questions were answered and the audience gave Mr. Cregar a standing applause, ending a day full of biodiesel activity.