Tag Archives: Mobil1 oil

Mobil1 Oil in a Cheap Wine Box

Cheap wine box full of Mobil1

Mobil1 Oil in a cheap wine box?  Yes.  You are reading this correctly.  Let me explain…

Today was oil-change-day for my wife’s Equinox and my Camaro as well.  I headed early this morning to Wally-World to see what was available.

The Equinox takes 5 quarts; the Camaro takes 8 quarts.  So normally I would buy my favorite 5 quart containers but today, i found something new…  Turns out some genius at the Mobil oil marketing department, came up with the brilliant idea of packaging 12 quarts (yes a dozen) of Mobil1 in a cheap wine box.

For those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, head out to the wine section of your favorite  local grocery store and find the “boxed wine” shelf.  That is where you can find the cheap wine packaged in a heavy cardboard box holding a “bag” full of wine.  Even comes with a nifty spigot that helps dispense the product.

I am a bit of a wine snob and this is the ultimate insult for what Galileo called “sunlight trapped in a liquid”.  No matter how humble wine is, it should be respected enough to be properly bottled.  But no.  The cheapest of the cheap has to suffer the indignity of being packaged in a plastic bladder stuffed in a cardboard box.  And now, they have done this to Mobil1.

What made this worse for me was that I didn’t realize the box contained a plastic bag full of oil.  No.  I learned of this when I got home and noticed the box had a “don’t cut this box with a knife” warning.  That is when I realized you have to carefully open a flap on the front of the box, then reach in the box, grab the spigot and gently pull it out.  Then after that, diligently place the spigot it in the proper position.  Made me think of something else you have to carefully grab and gently pull out before you can put it in the right position. 😉

The Good:

All this wonderment for $49 and change.  Not too bad, right?

But the deal goes downhill very, very quick from here.  I did buy a 5 quart bottle and fortunately that jug came with a handy with a way to measure off individual quarts by looking at the tick marks on the side of the plastic container.  So I dispensed the 5 quarts in the container first, and used the empty container to help figure out how much I had to use from there.

The Bad:

And here is where the “deal” goes south even more quickly.

Dispensing expensive synthetic motor oil should not be from a plastic bladder.  You see, that spigot in the picture above is not at the lowest point in the bag.  This means that when you think you have dispensed every drop of goodness…  Think again…

Open the “empty” box and we find this…

Too much Mobil1 to waste…  But how can we get this out?

Yep.  Quite a bit of expensive oil is still in the bag.  Surely you don’t throw this away!  So, I had to get pair of scissors and very carefully open an exit for this bit of oil.  Of course, if you don’t get it just perfect you end up making a mess.  Oh and that is not the only way to make a mess…  The spigot leaks every time you open/close that valve!

Take Aways…

You might ask why I am making such a big deal out of something so trivial.  Especially when there are so many things wrong with the world today.  Well, this is an epic fail on the part of the Mobil oil company.  Just think of the thousands of folks out there that don’t read the directions and cut into the box just to have 12 quarts of oil go everywhere.  Expensive lesson (to the tune of $49) to learn, huh?

The 5 quart plastic jug is the hands-down winner.  You can use it as a measuring device (thanks for the tick marks on the side) and it is easy and convenient to use.  I suppose the ultimate solution would be to save 5 quart jugs and refill them from a “cheap wine box of Mobil1”.

But no.  There is something very wrong about fumbling about trying to pull the spigot out of that box…

Any guess on what kind of ratchet we have here?

Question of Motor Oil Qualities

I decided to change oil on bowtie6 and headed to AutoZone with three jugs of used oil and responsibly disposed of the old stuff in their recycling tank.  Since they let me do this, I try to keep business with them so I picked up an Ecotec compatible K&N oil filter and a 5 quart jug of Mobil1 5w-30 oil.

The fellow behind the counter scanned the goods and said the bill was almost $50.  This didn’t make sense because the posted price for the oil was $29.  He said that is the price with a Mobil1 oil filter; otherwise the price of the oil is $38.  This is a scam because the Mobil1 filters are slightly double what the K&N filters go for.  So at the end, the price is almost the same.

I told him I would pass on the oil; instead I just bought the K&N filter.  This is when I asked him why the price discrepancy because I can buy the same jug of Mobil1 oil from Wal-Mart for $23.

His reply was very interesting…

Before he started answering my question, he informed me he was a previous manager at a Pep Boys and had also been in charge of an automotive department at a Wal-Mart before working at AutoZone.  And, he gave me the “look”, as if to say what he was about to say was the inside dope on matters.  Then, he proceeded to tell me that Exxon-Mobil makes two different qualities of oil.  AutoZone gets the premium batches while Wal-Mart gets the scraps.  Thus the difference in price between the two.

According to this fellow, the AutoZone Mobil1 oil gets certified as premium oil.  He then informed me that the Mobil1 oil sold at Wal-Mart is of a lesser quality.  In his words: “the Mobil1 sold at Wal-Mart is the bottom of the mixing vats and the size of the molecules is not up to par with the batches they sell at AutoZone”.

Hmmmm…  Again, I did some Google searches on this subject and indeed it is a matter of debate.  All I have to say is that given the law-suit friendly climate prevalent in our nation today, why would a huge company like Exxon-Mobil expose themselves to loss by making two qualities of oil branded under the same name?

Yet more food for thought:  what about the Mobil1 sold at Costco?  They don’t sell the jugs, instead they carry the six-packs.  Yet the price is comparable to the Wal-Mart price.  Reckon this has to do with volume of good sold and not necessarily quality?

What are your thoughts on this?

Like my Dad used to say, “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one”.  😉

Until next time…