Biomass or coal for tractor fuel?

[Class 801 Azuma]

Coal stacks up to 100 while biomass stacks up to 200. Which fuel should I use?

[Lil Puppy]

Biomass: 180KJ/per, 36MJ/stack (wiki says 36GJ but the math says 36MJ but that's if the 180KJ is accurate and not 180MJ)
Solid Biofuel: 450MJ/per, 90GJ/stack
Coal: 300MJ/per, 30GJ/stack

So, Coal is definitely better, almost 1000 times better than regular biomass, but it's 3 times less powerful than Solid Biofuel (research it in the MAM).

[Suzaku]

Coal. You can fully automate it.

Biofuel resources you'll need to go out and gather yourself. If you neglect to gather it, you'll run out, and anything that relies on those trucks will cease to function.

[Bear Minimum Effort]

A stack of 200 Solid Biofuel is about 90,000MJ.
A stack of 100 Coal is only 30,000MJ.

If you can get get a stack of Nuclear Fuel Rods (and not die before inserting them) They give 37,500,000MJ. I'm at the stage where I'm using Turbo Fuel myself which per stack is 200,000MJ.

[Kaeru Gaman]

I tested Canned Fuel and found that one stack of 100 Canned Fuel eats up appr. as fast as one stack of 200 Soild Biofuel, so I stayed with Solid Biofuel for a while. (you will always need it since your chainsaw does not work with another energy source)

meanwhile I'm using Batteries for the vehicles I use directly, because one stack last so long it does not go out until I visit the HUB again, so I need no reserve stack with me.

the automated line of the truck I fuel with canned fuel because it directly connects to the refinery at my oilfield. would be a nuisance to bring coal anywhere near that line, and petroleum coke does not last far enough.

[Maehlice]

Compacted Coal.

At that stage of the game, you don't really need Sulfur, but you do need lots of Coal for Steel production.

By the time you need that Sulfur, you should have Turbofuel and/or Trains.

[Mister Fabulous]

It really depends on where you're going and whether it's automated. You might be surprised how far you can get even on petroleum coke. Biofuel is find imo for personal exploration. I wouldn't use it for an automated route.

Here are 2 routes I set up with the playthrough I'm doing with my kid: https://imgur.com/Mll0KYU

I only fill fuel at one location for both of these. If you filled at both, you could go farther of course. The tractor uses about 2/3 the coal stack. The truck uses 3/4 of the coke stack.

Also in another test, I got from grasslands to north coast driving all willy-nilly on about 60 refular fuel in a truck.