Ruan Tanker Joliet Illinois

The majority of the hours were just trying to get the load out of the plant. We were a private company and hauled our own products. The drivers were treated well, the plant operators and warehousemen werent, so there was a ton of turnover, which meant alot overwieght loads that had to be made legal. We also hauled our 0wn Chemicals in dryvans and flatbeds, so the loads were always not secured properly and the placards were usuallt wrong. Then you always had to hunt down hoses or clean dirty ones out and take those.

Coming back, you would have break your sets up, fuel, then go talk to dispatcher and go over the next run to make aure there were no surprises,,,,,which there always was.

 

The problem with Joliet is that dispatch doesn't know what's going on, and the new terminal manager is trying to run the terminal like it's a normal terminal and not Hazmat. Most of us that trained guys for them have told them we won't train anymore because they're taking guys that we say aren't ready to be on their own and just cutting them loose when the terminal manager feels they should be because they need loads covered. It's a bad situation and it's not worth the money to me anymore. I'm taking a local job with a pay cut so I'll be home nightly again. Anything g you guus want to know feel free to ask.

 

I'm home 2-3 nights a week then home Friday night and leave out Sunday afternoon usually. Im leaving about noon Tomorrow for a two stop load, Austin, MN and Le Mars Ia. Some days you'll run 500-600 miles and be home that night, but you'll use most of your 14 then be home for 10 hours and roll again. It's not a difficult job, but for some reason there are alot of people who will come in, train for a week or two then decide they don't want to do it. We never Backhaul, as soon as your empty you head back to Joliet. I'm on pace for about 85k this year gross, so the money is there to be made especially when they're short of drivers. I've had weeks where I've had 3500 miles and weeks where I've had 2200. We have 18 trucks and I think 5 are empty now. Part of the problem with 80k plus is that it throws you into another tax bracket.

 

I'm not, even though I should itemize I never have. And yeah any questions are fine. It's good to know all you can before making a Decision.

All the trucks have a PTO and compressor for air unload. We have a couple stops that have a pump to assist. Miller in Milwaukee and Nestle in Anderson, in.

Normal stops just depends on how dispatch builds the runs. We do alot where the whole trailer, 3-4 compartments all go to one stop. Usually there are 2-3 stops though.

A big reason for me is I just want to be home every night and have a normal schedule again. We're paid well and they leave us alone for the most part, but im ok with the pay cut to get the mon-fri 10 hrs a day and home nightly thing back.

Typically it's about 30-45 min a compartment. Different chemicals unload at dictates though. Acid is about 10 lbs a gallon and like water and Caustic is about 12.5 lbs a gallon and thick so the same amount of Caustic takes longer. Then we have some chemicals that have foaming agents in them which have to have less pressure or they'll foam out of the tank. But 30-45 min a compartment average is a pretty good baseline.

 

Yeah, we do alot of the same places but you'll rotate through them. I've probably got 125 locations saved in my GPS .

3-4 weeks is about normal, most of it is policies and the scanner system Ecolab uses. It's not bad if you've hauled chemicals though, kind of like a refresher course. The chemical suit isn't bad until it's a 90 degree day.

 

are you guy's using the red suits or the green rubber suits? the green rubber suit is brutal all the time.