@samuelszuchan: The day after a Beijing newspaper published the report, a truck owner in Hebei province had his brother buy a backdated tank-wash receipt for 500 yuan ($69), when a real wash could cost 900. The tanker, which had carried a coal-based industrial wax before being filled with cooking oil for human consumption, had never been near a wash station, according to its GPS record. To properly clean wax out of a tank, workers need to use an alkali wash and then steam it at high temperatures. But if they didn’t, the residual wax is colorless and hard to detect anyway The economics of trucking incentivized drivers to skip the wash. Truck drivers said wash stations are usually not near the loading point, so the driver has to drive an empty truck to find one, wasting half a day. "At least 700 or 800, even 1,000," referring to yuan, said one truck owner in Anhui province. For a haul of about 190 miles, a truck owner in Shandong province said he earned about 5,000 yuan. After paying road tolls, fuel costs and the driver's 40% share, he was left with 1,500 yuan ($211). A tank wash could cost anywhere from a third to all of that. But the most common phrase was simpler: "One wash equals a day's wages gone." Meanwhile, regulation was lax. "We don't actually inspect the tank," a sales manager at a Tianjin refinery owned by the state grain conglomerate admitted. Drivers said inspectors usually checked just the two hatches on the tanker, so that was what they wiped clean. The penalties were also light: a first-time violator would receive a warning, and fines of 10,000 to 50,000 yuan would be levied only if the company refused to correct its mistakes. After the scandal broke, the Tianjin refinery was fined the largest penalty of all, 2.86 million yuan (about $394,000), enough to pay for about 3,200 proper tank washes. In January 2026, four men, including two truck owners and two drivers, were convicted in court of producing and selling toxic food. The 21.6 tons of tainted oil had already been eaten in Ordos. No one there has been compensated.

Sam Szuchan

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Saturday 26 September 2026 14:00:00 GMT