Delivering fifty gallons of 100LL to your Cessna isn’t easy. There are approximately 167,000 aircraft in the United States that rely on 100 low lead avgas (100LL) for safe operation, using a total of about 180 million gallons each year. While that sounds huge, that’s actually a small niche market in the world of petroleum products. Because the avgas market is so small, requires such high standards, and features a toxic additive called “tetraethyl lead” the logistics of producing, moving, storing, and delivering high-purity avgas is problematic. In this essay, Buddy Stallings explains why.
