Marathon oil

Does anyone use marathon oil? My fuel man is carrying and has a good price just wondering if its worth buying? I normally run vavoline premium blue 15w40. He also has trans/hyd fluid that meets deere and ih standards.

As long as it meets the mfgs requirements, it will be fine.

There are only a few oil makers, and hundreds of brands that just place an order with the canning company with their logo on the container.

Same oil, different packaging.

When I worked at deere in the early 90s the oil was on shell or chevron skids.

I get most of my oil and grease from the local FS, not sure who makes it, but never had any issues with it.

Valvoline is a spin off of Marathon by way of it's merger with Ashland Oil (Marathon Ashland Petroleum). I'd be real suspicious if the oils aren't all produced in the same facilities and bottled differently. May be way off base here but the oil business is a convoluted inbred business. Since Valvoline was spun off as a stand alone company I'd suspect Marathon is simply making there appear to be more difference than their is.

I have never seen it but I have been watching its stock provided it is the same .

Our 1 station, that we have in my home town,is it's third generation, the guy started it was a Standard dealer, then they rebranded to Tesoro or how ever they spelled it,for 20 years, just two weeks ago they switched to Marathon to, we have a pretty strong farming community here,in North Dakota, they are the richest family in town by far,Our John Deere dealer lives in the country, he would have more assets,but the fuel supplier family has done very well! They got one stations, in they next town also, and a monopoly in both !

i did haul 1 load[oil] from Shell in St Louis MO, to John Deere,in the late 80's

Id think its fine, so many questions like this are asked its getting old, id like to know how many have seen engine failure from a brand of oil? I myself have never had a catastrophic engine failure from any brand of oil that iv used. Iv used sears, Atlantic, valveoline , penz oil quakerstate shell tsc and on and on. Never a problem.
I remember when synthetic oil came oil, holy cow they said you cant mix that with conventional oil? Now they have a blend of both? Just keep oil in what ever you have and you will be fine.

I wouldn’t use a cheap oil in anything more complex than a cheap open center gear pump type system

Yepper....Momma Deere built tractors and implements, not in the business of refining oil...writing specks for it, but not producing it.

I am of the same opinion as others about vats sitting at different places with blank containers sitting in the warehouse, and boxes of vendor's labels sitting on a shelf. Vat contains the finest oil of of any of the specs, or maybe 2 vats with the spec split somewhere between here and there and order comes in for x quantity of oil from vendor Y. Processor gets out the containers, directs them to the applicable vat, fills, attaches the appropriate label and off to the shipper.

You aren't going to tell me that a high volume (for economy of operation) shipper has a little old lady with an eye dropper and a table full of additives, sits down and measures out, to the Nth degree the specific requirements for equipment mfgr ABC and customer XYZ's specifications. I have used numerous products over the years and looking at some of the labels, when origin is listed, Warren Oil, a huge US distributor shows up frequently. Matter of fact, if it's not a Fortune 100 oil company's product, I look for the Warren reference on the label.......when wanting to buy the product.

As said, the oil canners, now oil plastic juggers, are just just like the refiners and use the same oil and gas. Each company, like shell and mobil, etc., has their own special proprietary mix of additives that get mixed in before filling plastic jugs or the refineries adding it to a bulk tanker truck. So the oil and gas is refined the same way but if you are partial to certain additives then you have to check for that. I think most diesel oil additives are designed for the over the road truckers who put a million miles on their trucks with the turbos etc. along with changes in the diesel fuel (like lower sulfur) that require a change in the oil to match and prolong engine life. Not so much of an issue with older tractors that started out on plain mineral oil.

I've got a handful of oil can spouts out in the barn collecting dust. They must be good for something. Think I got a couple old unopened oil cans around somewhere.

I am a oil distributor...All the oil companies buy additives to meet spec.....good oil is good oil.......junk oil is junk oil ...all majors sell good oil....some blenders, not all blenders cut corners

oil posts are almost as bad as political posts for getting peoples opinions.

as mentioned before not all oils are the same just like not all batteries are the same just because they were made by the same company.

> a prime example: the Lincoln town cars were way better than Pintos... NO! how could that be?? they're both made by Ford!!! same goes for oil, batteries and a host of other things. Its not the brand on the bottle, it how the oil in the bottle was made. many of the major oil companies also sell different versions/levels of quality of their oils as well.

TO REALLY know if the oil is any good you need to look at the spec sheet. For example what is the TBD #? the higher the number the better the oils additive packages. get the spec sheets from a couple different oils and compare. then you'll know which is a better oil.

Just because it meets the API spec doesn't mean its the "best oil" just means its meets the minimum requirements of the spec and means NOTHING more. Is that spec good enough for your engine?? maybe, maybe not.. there are many oils out there that exceed the API specs. I've suspected the specs could be set low enough (??) to get the car/truck/tractor just out of warranty. price doesnt always mean better but the better additives do cost more.

good luck. your results may vary.

Ah i have seen catastrophic engine failure on a large scale . Back in 1970 i had just take over a Chrysler Plymouth dealership parts dept. and since it was a new place we were just really getting things rolling . I had a HUGE amount of room for LOTS of parts , had a huge SERVICE DEPT WITH ROOM FOR 14 TECH WITH EACH HAVING A DEAD STALL AND A LIFT STALL Huge body shop with a brand new state of the art paint booth and bake oven and room for ten bodyman . One of the local Oil dist. approached us about installing over head lube racks at each lift bay and since i had so much room they would install BULK tanks for oils grease and antifreee in Bulk with a NEW fangled computer controlled metering system and printer that would print out and price the product on the wro's and Ro's with and inter com system between each station . and what the owner liked was with not cost to him as long as we used there products . At the time the standard in the industry was the 10-30 for cars and light trucks , some guys ran a 20-40 and even a 20-50 in there performance engines . They installed a 500 gallon one for the 10-30 a 500 gal for ATF 500 for anti freeze and a bank of 55 gallon drums for chassis grease and 250 for gear oil and two 250's for the RACING oil . This one company had all the MO PAR dealers locked in and one of the other oil dist. had the local Ford and GM dealers locked in . We started seeing massive engine problems after the second load of Bulk oil , not just us but all the MO PAR GUYS . But just on the 10-30 . I will not say who's oil this was but lets just say it was a Pa. based company . It was not just the Bulk oil it was the same in the Qt. cans . and not just or area it was wide spread we started to find out . Our factory rep took samples from all of use that were on the bulk deal and in three days we all got a call from the factory to stop usen that oil The oil company got sued . In 77 i went and bought my own semi and after the second oil change mine started sucking oil big time as i had switched brands on the second change and before i had 35000 miles on it it had to be rebuilt . The inside of that NTC 350 looked like it had 700000 miles on it . Bearings were into the copper liners were scored cam shaft and followers had to be replaced new heads were installed due to valve and guide ware but the crank was still good . It was the OIL and that oil came from a company in Texas. So yes i have seen engine failures over engine oils.

Well it didn't stop Arnold Palmer from making money on his commercials.

This is why there was so much testing done during this period to meet the 60 to 100 tests to meet all the different manufactures oil specs... as oil was.... "all over the place" As these tests evolved and oil standards were set, oil starting having to meet specs, and the world changed. Today the new api specs now account for the 100s of test and based on its api rating, you can get a performance level you can count on. Also oil additives have improved so that modern oils run rings around the old parrafinic oils of the 60s and 70s.

Back when 2000 started I worked for a Marathon jobbers. Valvoline All Fleet 15wX40w was Marathon 15x40. Same company. Marathon bought Ashland, Valvoline parent co. I hauled bulk oil from Hicks oil. Just North of DuCoine Il. Both came from same tank. Could get about any brand including Mobil 1 . I still buy Hicks oil from same place.