I am a proponent of wood heat myself, even though I work in the oil industry. Been doing it for over 30 years now.

Many of our fuel customers have pellet stoves, gas fireplaces or wood stoves although most are used for backup heat or supplemental heat rather than dedicated space heating. Many newer homes have a couple gas fireplaces.

We burn wood at our camps and vacation home although dedicated space heating and water heating is handled by oil fired boilers paired with indirect water heaters. I have a few hundred acres of wooded land, but I buy my wood cut, split and delivered from one of our fuel customers. We burn wood more for the atmosphere than anything else.

There are several advantages to the "keep-filled" oil delivery program. One is that customer does not run out of oil. Another is that the tank is refilled while a reasonable amount of oil still is in the tank, avoiding stirring up all the sediment while refilling the tank. Driving the delivery truck to the site costs the same for 10 gallons or for 500. Larger deliveries reduce delivery expenses. My recommendation is to budget for the oil and accumulate the cash to pay for it when delivered. It must be paid one way or another.

Our largest source of run-out calls, pump-bleeding, emergency deliveries, condensation and sludge stirring issues comes from customers that buy fuel from COD companies with low minimum deliveries. The customers often have the money to buy more fuel, they just hate parting with their money all at once. More of a psychological issue. They're like the people that drive 10 miles to put 10 bucks of gas in their gas guzzlers.