JACKSON, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
All kinds of vehicles were on display Thursday at the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum. They all had one thing in common. They run on propane gas.
It costs from $1,200 to $5,000 to convert a vehicle to run on propane, depending on it's size, but propane sells for as little as $1.55 per gallon.
State Insurance Commissioner and Fire Marshal, Mike Chaney, has ordered all eight of the state vehicles in his agencies, converted to propane. He estimates he will save just under $2,000 per vehicle per year running on propane and thinks it would be a good idea if all of state government made the conversion, because of the cost savings.
"So you can roughly say that's about $12,000 per vehicle, over the lifetime of the vehicle ah burning propane. That's a lot of money when you look at the number of vehicles we have in the state," said Chaney. "If you have got 7,000 vehicles in the State of Mississippi, and you can save $10,000 every five years on each one of them, you are talking about some serious money. I mean really serious money."
Blossman Gas representative Charlie Stafford is a strong advocate of converting to propane.
"Ninety-eight percent of propane is produced domestically, either here or by our partners in Mexico," said Stafford.
"We do have 241 locations around Mississippi where you can purchase propane. It's a clean burning fuel, it's domestically available, and just a lot of it here in Mississippi," added Phillip Chamblee of the Mississippi Petroleum Marketers.
Copyright 2012 WLBT. All rights reserved.
