An Auburn businessman and his son are making their way back to Maine this week, proud owners of a wood-fueled pickup truck.

Ford Reiche and his son George left Birmingham, Ala., Tuesday behind the wheel of a bright green vehicle they’ve dubbed the Termite, according to Reiche’s blog.

Reiche, president of Auburn-based Safe Handling, is documenting the trip online at http://blog.safehandling.com. They hope to arrive back in Maine Sunday afternoon.

The Termite is a 1991 Dodge Dakota pickup truck that’s been heavily modified by Alabama farmer and inventor Wayne Keith.

It uses a high-temperature reactor kept in the truck’s bed to slowly roast wood chips, creating a wood gas. That gas is cooled and filtered and fed into the vehicle’s engine. The vehicle’s speed controls how quickly the engine demands the wood gas, and how quickly the reactor burns through the wood. A gasoline powered system provides a back-up, according to Reiche’s blog.

The truck is capable of driving one mile on a pound of wood, or about 5,000 miles on a cord of wood. Inventor Keith has already driven 15,000 miles in the vehicle, including a trek from Alabama to California and back in 2008. He’s currently working on a new prototype of the vehicle.

Reiche was investigating wood-to-energy technology for use at Safe Handling’s Auburn location when a friend passed along information about Keith and his truck. The two became friends and Keith agreed to sell the truck earlier this year.

Reiche picked up the truck and began heading home on Monday after a day’s worth of orientation and learning how to operate the vehicle. He couldn’t be reached by telephone for a comment but officials at Safe Handling directed all questions to his blog. According to his blog, he’s interested in testing the vehicle as an alternative to gasoline.

“I am not positive wood is the answer, but gasoline sure isn’t,” Reiche wrote.

It’s a very different driving experience. Starting the engine cold, for example, isn’t as easy as turning a key. A lit piece of newspaper is used to start the flames in the reactor, although Reiche wrote that the engine is usually ready to go 45 seconds later.

A dizzying array of guides and gauges peer through the rear window. Instead of just having to track speed and engine RPMs, the driver has to keep an eye on the reactor’s temperature and air and vacuum pressure as well as moisture in the air. Too wet, and the reactor won’t burn the wood properly.

But Reiche said the truck is much hardier than he first thought.

“We went almost 100 miles around Wayne’s town and Birmingham yesterday in the rain; at some points pouring rain,” he wrote. “No problem. I had also read more than once on the WWW that a wood gasified vehicle cannot exceed 3,000 RPM because of the slow combustion rate of wood gas. We went to 4,000 RPM (in the rain) with no end in sight.”

The Reiches plan on traveling 300 miles per day. That puts them in Western Pennsylvania on Thursday or Friday and in Massachusetts on Saturday. They hope to arrive back in Maine sometime Sunday afternoon.

They plan on scavenging wood along the way home to keep going, although Reiche did send a query to the American Auto Club, according to his blog:

“Does my AAA membership cover delivery of piles of dried wood chunks to us roadside if our fire dies out on the way back to Maine? If it helps, I have been a member in good standing since 1970.”

Termite’s trek

Follow Ford and George Reiche as they pilot their wood burning pickup truck back to Maine on their blog, http://blog.safehandling.com.

The pair are hoping to arrive back in Maine on Sunday.