7,500 Miles On $5 In Gas, Veggie Oil

High Schooler Does It In Pickup Running Mainly On Cooking Oil

(CBS)  It's one thing to be fed up with high gas prices, but Atlanta high school senior Bill Bridgers decided to do something about it.

He converted his diesel pickup truck to run almost exclusively on used vegetable oil, and for the past three weeks he has been driving across the country with his father and a friend, filling people in on alternative fuel possibilities.

Bridgers calls the project VegTheUSA.

Standing next to his truck on The Early Show plaza Friday, Bridgers told co-anchor Harry Smith that vegetable oil "is the precursor to biodiesel. This is pure, straight vegetable oil."

The technology to retrofit the truck is "all over the Internet," Bridgers says.

He has a huge filter "to get the mandarin chicken" and other food particles and impurities out of the oil, which is then heated to 180 degrees, and pumped into the truck's engine.

Bridgers says he has lots of friends in the restaurant business who give him their used oil, which is just a waste product to them.

Gasoline is only used when the truck is first turned on, then just before it's turned off.

So far Bridgers says he and his companions have driven 7,500 miles and spent just $5 on gas. The rest of the time, his truck's been purring on the veggie oil.