What You Need to Know if You Ever Borrow (or Buy) a Diesel Vehicle

So you need to borrow someone's truck and they are like, "No problem, here's the keys, but if you need to put gas in it, just letting you know that its diesel."  For a brief moment, you stop and think to yourself, can I do this task without borrowing the truck?

You realize (in about two seconds) that not only have you never driven a diesel powered vehicle, car or truck, but you have never had to look for and find diesel fuel either.

Granted, I have been driving for a few years and consider myself to be a car enthusiast, but still was surprised that I had never actually driven one, was there something different that I needed to do?

I had a quick chat with someone (not the person I borrowed the truck from, because I didn't want them to panic) because I wanted to know if there was anything 'different' that I needed to know.

They told me that when I turned the key, it would take a second for the engine to turn over and that I needed to make sure I put diesel into it as opposed to gasoline, for fuel, but other than that, I should be ok.

Ok, I borrow the truck, run my errand and I notice that the low fuel indicator comes on, so I was telling myself that I needed to put some 'gas' in it, as a way of saying thanks for being able to borrow it. It comes to my realization at this point that not all 'gas stations' sell diesel. Even though I have an indicator that is telling me I have 50 miles left, and I only have 8 miles probably left in my journey, I started to get nervous that I was going to run out. So know this, it might take you a few minutes to find a place to get this diesel fuel. When it does, double check that you are indeed using the green colored pump. The diesel will either be located at the same set of pumps, but with its own handle and separate section at that main pump or it will be located at a completely different spot at the fueling station.

Yes, I survived, but it was interesting to be faced with this new (albeit minor) challenge at this point in my driving life.