West coast fuel truck and trailer

With truck-trailer ,you cannot put a steeringwheelholder in the seat.
That might be another big reason why you see so few.

 

That's funny. Does anyone know the trick in sliding the trailer over if in a tight jam?

 

Toss the trailer brakes/johnny bar on, reverse the truck, sliding/hoping the trailer over as needed?

Water may be good to use to help, but not sure?

 

try being in a set of triples.

 

That's it. An old timer taught me that and I've used it. The only difference I did from what he did was I used water and he wanted to use diesel. You've got to watch out because it does scare the hell out of people standing there pumping gas. It's a lot easier than backing out of a station especially when your truck and trailer is 80 feet.

 

I have never seen a set of triples haul gasoline to stations. I know you know this but others may not. To be correct adding another trailer to a truck and trailer does not make it a set of triples. It becomes a truck with 2 trailers. I would love to try and back that set. I was getting better backing a set of triples but not far. Then I got the call to haul gasoline and I left that LTL job the next day. The boss at that job asked what ARCO had over them and I replied "drivers that retire".

 

You have triples like that roadway has.. Where you have 3 28 ft trailers., or less. Until you get to petroleum.. Then it's a truck, and most are a 4 axle trailer and a 2 axle trailer. With that set up you can haul 129,000 lbs or about 12,500 gallons of diesel. I knew one guy that got it up to 15,000 gallons a couple of times.. One in a while , if the station was set up to the truck,and not just built for cars and a truck would have to squeeze in..if they had room to pull in and pull out, once in a while they would use triples. But it also had to be more than 1 grade.. with a super tank.. 3 axle truck.. 4 axle trailer was 10,700 ga of gas. At truck stops they fit, and out at the mines. We went to one mine that would take about 25,000 gallons of diesel a day. So about 2 loads a day.

 

We had a driver that would stuff the truck all the way up. Almost 16,000 gallons but he would be over the weight on our permit. It was stupid on his part and I would ask him why he would do that. It's really no benefit to anyone and he would be the one that would get the ticket and maybe fired. We loaded 12,450 gallons and I loved those super tankers. I got so spoiled on those trucks I'd rather drive those than any other. Then when we got ABS what a set-up. We ran super singles on the trailer and when it rained for the first time in a while in Vegas you'd lock the brakes up real easy and slide side to side. Then when ABS came in no longer did we have any more problems with brakes. It's nice to have a truck where the trailer is the same every day. Our mechanic would make sure everything worked like it should. We had no stations that we never had to back out of unless there was a problem. When I first started working there I swore we would never get that truck into some of the tight squeezes but sure enough it went. With the long drawbar the trailer tracked closer to the truck than any other set-up.