Drivers fuel up with contaminated fuel at Clinton Meijer

As drivers fueled up for the weekend in Clinton, some Meijer customers found out the hard way that there was a mix-up at the pump. 

At the Meijer gas station on South Groesbeck Highway in Clinton Township, about 250 customers pulled up and fueled up, only to pull away with the wrong type of fuel in the tank.

James Glen is one of those customers. He said he filled up his tank with the wrong fuel when he stopped in Friday evening. 

At the corner of Cass and Groesbeck the car wouldn’t leave the light, Galen says and he knew there was a serious problem. Now he's stuck trying to siphon the fuel out of his own car.

“It is very frustrating. I put a lot of money into it, I worked a long time for it. It’s very frustrating that I’m not even sure if I drive home if it will make it.," Galen said. 

Galen plans to tow his vehicle, if he’s not able to drive it to a repair shop. 

As it turns out, Meijer had what the company called ‘contaminated’ diesel and gas. Meijer said the company that transports the fuel mixed up the tanks and put diesel in the unleaded tank and vice-versa. That was at 2:30 Friday morning

It took another 8 hours before Meijer caught the mistake. They said 250 people fueled up before it was stopped.

Marcus Riley is the manager of Uncle Ed’s Oil Shoppe and says this is more expensive than a tank of gas. You could be looking at a new car, whether you were ready for it or not.

“You just hurt your own motor you just cost yourself a new car,” Riley said.

Meijer thinks of the 250 customers, ten were diesel customers with unleaded gas in their tank. Riley said all drivers need to act now.

“You want to want to stop your car right away and get it towed. The longer you let diesel be inside a gas engine, what it does is corrodes out the injectors on the car. The fuel lines are going to completely break down and eventually your car will stop running all together,” he said. “You want to do a fuel injection cleaning on the car. You want to flush the whole thing out and refill it with proper gasoline. You want to put it back on full, that's the only way to distort that diesel out of there.”

The good news is this is the only place where the mix-up happened. The bad news is that James’ dad, also named James, remembers when this happened at a different Meijer in the past.

“What they say and what they do are two different things. I’m more looking what they do,” he said.

If you think you’re one of the 250, call Meijer. The number to call is 1-800-543-3704.

More good news : if you filled up with unleaded premium, that gas was not tainted.