Bad gas has a happy ending

Uh oh, Sharon Lineberry said. Bad gas!

It wasn't a bad burrito. It was a tainted tankful of unleaded that stopped Lineberry's van on May 5 after she had driven about a mile from a Wilco-Hess station on Trawick Road.

She had it towed to a garage, and the mechanic gave her the diagnosis.

The good news is that Wilco-Hess did the right thing, Lineberry said later.

I stopped by the station yesterday afternoon and was very pleased with the response I received. It was in fact a widespread problem -- the clerk at the station said they had received a bad shipment of gas at 2 a.m. Tuesday and started getting calls by about 6:50 a.m. They closed the pumps at about 7 a.m.

The clerk at the local station faxed my information to Wilco-Hess' corporate office, and someone from the office called me within an hour. They're sending a check to completely cover the cost of the bad gas and the repairs I needed.