I think you went the wrong way... let’s try the other way.
>A 30,000 gallon railroad tank car should weigh something less than 268,000 lbs. fully loaded. An American railroad can haul an average gross ton 480 miles on a single gallon of diesel.
One gallon of ethanol weigh about 6.584 lbs.
So, 30,0000 * 6.584 = 197,520 lbs
Now add in the weight of the 30,000G tanker: 65,700 lbs
263,220lbs
A ton is 2,000 lbs; so we divide the 263,220 by 2,000 to get 131.61 Tons.
So it takes 131.61 gallons of diesel to move 480 miles... that’s so the cost of hauling that [per mile] is the 480mi/131.61ga.
That’s about 3.65 MPG for that entire load.
Now, since 1 gallon of diesel fuel = 138,690 Btu we multiply that by the 3.65 and get the cost to transport the load in MI/BTU
138,690 * 3.65 = 506,218.5
Now what we need is the average distance between distilleries and where it is blended into E-85 [refineries? mixing-stations?] and multiply them together to get the cost in BTUs per tank of E85 mix. We would then use 506,218.5 * AVERAGE_DISTANCE / 30,000 to get the transport cost per gallon of Ethanol in BTUs. {If we wanted to be even more accurate we would apply the cost to transport .15 of the E85 to the fueling stations as well.}
I'm not quite sure how would a truck from the terminal to a gas station would know whether it was carrying a gallon of ethanol or a gallon of gasoline? presumably both move from the terminal to the retail outlet in the same way.
In Northeastern Indiana, there are at least 4 ethanol plants within 50 miles of the largest racking terminal; its not like we're moving from the Persian Gulf to the US eastern seaboard here.
I'm not quite sure what the significance of your 506,218.5 number is. If you're looking for btu's per mile, you would divide, not multiply, 138,690 by 3.65.