Who Makes OEM Oils?

have you ever bought a genuine lubricant from the likes of John Deere Toyota Mercedes-Benz hitashi and ever wondered do they actually make this stuff well it's the industry's worst kept secret that no most of these brands are not actually manufacturing they are after all not oil companies themselves and in fact generally they go to a large Oil Company who manufactures on their behalf and then simply white labels the product but if you've ever wanted to know how exactly can I figure out who is making it and what are the steps that they go through in terms of specifications and who's really kind of setting the tone for these products well that's what we'll explore in this video now it should be said from the outset that there is no simple onetoone relationship when describing who is manufacturing these products it's impossible to say for example that Volvo is manufactured simply by shell and it's because sometimes these manufacturing contracts are awarded by region so Volvo for example who have both a passenger vehicle and a commercial vehicle division might bid those separately they might go out to Tender in different parts of the world and different manufacturers might win the tender in different parts of the world in some cases it might be a global tender and in fact there is a single organization that is manufacturing the OEM fluid across the world in other cases who manufactures the oils versus who manufactures the grease can be different so if you'll remember during that weird Co period when we were experiencing a lot of supply chain challenges there was a facility that was owned by chemol that's a Luol company in Rockton Illinois and that unfortunately burnt to the ground fortunately no loss of life and that was actually a major Greece manufacturer for many of the OEM so they made for example the John Deere Greece um but they didn't make any lubricants so the oils for those different companies were clearly made by someone else now the easiest trick in the book if you want to discover who actually manufactures these lubricants is mostly to go to the safety data sheet because the safety data sheet generally lists the actual manufacturer so here's an example I'm going to search for Volvo engine oil VDS 15 w40 and that's going to take me to a safety data sheet and if I go across first of all you can see the print date on this is 2021 so relatively recent and you can probably be safe to assume that the manufacturer hasn't changed in the intervening 3 years and sure enough under manufacturer or suppliers detail Shell Oil Products us that's a pretty good indication that shell is making the Volvo oil similarly we can do the same search for Caterpillar diesel engine oil maybe it's the ultral low sulfur version 15 w40 again you can look up the SDS and sure enough under company identification we have Exon Mobile Corporation the reason these are often listed is because in this case what they want to say is if there are any safety issues who should you be contacting well it's the manufacturer of record how about Toyota genuine motor oil of Z w30 well in this case this is uh sort of like an interesting one right this is clearly an old data sheet because it shows the manufacturer to be calex Australia petroleum limited and that's a company that doesn't actually exist anymore they've morphed into a company that's now known as ample right so it's a an Australian company that used to own the rights to the calex name but actually sells mobile product now now what's interesting about this is they might still make the Toyota genuine product but ample as a lubricants manufacturer doesn't exist outside of Australia and so what this tells us is that the Toyota genuine oil is almost definitely manufactured by someone else in let's say for example the us or South America it will be sort of a regionally defined contract but there still gives us an idea of who is likely to be manufacturing it now remember these contracts change and generally what will happen there is that the formulation won't and this brings us on to the second topic which is who exactly is kind of in control here is it the oil companies that are manufacturing and are specifying the product or is it coming from the manufacturers so what we would generally say is it's likely that the o is the one that's setting the specifications after all in the passenger vehicle World there are any number of specifications that exceed for example the API specs in commercial vehicles for example you have the API ck4 and then all the other truck manufacturers will have their own specifications that sit on top of that if you're a European manufacturer most likely it's based on an AA claim and then there's an additional requirement on top of that so then then take those specifications go to the oil manufacturer and say I want you to make something with these performance properties go ahead and and make something or alternatively the OEM might work directly with some of the lubricant additive companies to come up with a formulation they then own the IP to that formulation and then Farm it out to a toll blender and this is pretty common practice within the industry you actually see it for example in commercial vehicle off highway so let's say for example if you took the caterpillar specifications for hydraulic oil one thing that you'll find is that they have this unique Quirk where they Define the amount of zinc that needs to be in the hydraulic oil formulation and this is a little bug bear of mine but caterpillar always Define 900 parts per million of Zinc at the very least now viewers of this channel because we've gone through this before will know that the Zed in Zed DDP or the Z in zddp if you're an American doesn't actually do anything right it's the P it's the phosphorus that does all the work and yet they're defining it on a zinc specification that's the first reason why it's annoying the second reason why it's annoying is because there are alternative anti-wear chemistries why do we have to use zinc in order to get the performance that's required in fact in some mobile hydraulic applications we know that zinc often leads to sludging because of thermal degradation of the actual zinc molecule and if you don't believe me talk to anyone on a mind site who happens to have Hitachi excavation equipment you'll know it's a problem now speaking of Hitachi their engine oil actually appears to be manufactured by toetal which is kind of interesting that that was maybe a little bit unexpected and while we're here we might as well knock over a few others so we've got case for example their engine or super is manufactured by Shell at least in the Middle East I'm not sure about the US John Deere's hydraulic oils at least are made by Philip 66 and then AC Delco which is GM's product is mostly made by X mobile although I did find one instance of it being manufactured by Chevron in the Middle East finally BMW their genuine oil appears to be made by Forks it should be noted that you can't always go to the s s s for this kind of information dler trucks for example lists all of the SDS on their website and if you go into any of them they simply list dler as the manufacturer of record so that doesn't really tell us exactly who manufactures the product it's pretty unlikely that it's damler that's actually doing the blending there but for a lot of companies we can go to the SDS to find out so what's the ultimate answer on who makes these products unfortunately it depends because it depends on location and it depends on time and this is because it's a contractual relationship between the OEM and the oil company that makes the product sometimes that contract ends and new person wins it

Channel: Lubrication Explained

Views: 13,575

Keywords: Caterpillar, Grease, John Deere, Lubricants, Lubrication, Toyota

Id: tN9pI7gLEVE

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024