Shortage of propane, Nation wide, trasport drivers hours of service rules lifted.

I'm a local propane delivery driver and last week I was informed by my boss that we are in a propane shortage. He didn't give an exact reason but said the refinery slowed down production prematurely thinking winter was over. At least here in California. Now we have been getting our bulk loads from out of state. The price of propane per gallon has gone up at least $0.40 in the past week.

 

...and with all of the Marcellus Shale Gas drilling, fracking, fractionation and distribution pipeline networks going on in Western Pa., NE Ohio and W.Va., there shouldn't be a shortage for the next 200 years. Maybe if they stopped exporting so much of the domestic product, we'd have a bit more for ourselves...? Just sayin'.

"Shortages" are just a cover-up term for "greed".

 

Most companies require that a driver still conduct themselves on the 11/14/10 manner. But there may still be some outlaw companies that say run till you get tired.

During on exemption I ran 19 hrs non stop. But it was because the good ppl of TN needed it. This was before eld's. But no safety director at any company would want a driver running over there 14. So during these exemptions it's the 70 that's lifted. Nothing else

 

It's a shame.

When I say there was a shortage, it may have technically been one, but I always believe it's the refineries inducing the shortage on purpose.

They will start using tactics like allocation to make it look like supply is extremely low.....that's when the price starts going up and retailers start getting in a panic because they can't get the gas they need and have to resort to going to farther distances to get the supply they need.

Everytime the refinery companies see an opportunity to do this, they do. They cash in on it every single time.

 

The other side of the coin is the commodities market. Propane is a commodity traded publicly like many other energy products are, and it's all in the hands of the ones pulling the strings who dictates the supply and demand scenarios we are told are "shortages".

I've hauled it all, from gas and fuel to butane, Y grade, propane and LNG. What a joke that LNG business is. Security up the wazoo...military style security measures just to enter the plant to load, literally with hydraulic baracades, guards with rolling mirrors, etc. The one place in Everett, Mass I used to go to that distributes LNG is just bursting at the seams with this stuff.

Drivers get scrutinized every single load, whether it was once a day or 3 times a day, you had to go through the same exact protocol each time. One day as I was getting checked like a convict on my second load for that day, a taxi drives in and back out, loaded with what was obvious was a load of middle eastern looking deckhands on the LNG ship that was docked there, unloading gas into the facility from where else other than Yemen. Yemen...

I had to ask. I said, "why am I being checked out like a foreign spy every time I show up, but you just let that taxi in and out with a load of what looked like terrorists to me?" The guard just shrugged it off and replied, "it's policy, we're not allowed to scrutinize the crew members of the ships, they are exempt from this". Later on as I was still there on site, the taxi returned and all the passengers all unloaded their cargo out of the taxi of big screen TV's from Walmart, various electronic equipment, personal entertainment equipment, etc. Who knows what-all they brought back onto the ship from the city.

All this activity happening with people from a country that hate our guts and would like to kill us all, yet they supply us with Liquefied Natural Gas from Yemen, because it is CHEAP from them. It's all about the almighty dollar friends.

 

So I guess it's ok to break HOS regs if you really need the stuff.
So, um look, it's either unsafe or its not. Which is it?

 

A man's got's to knows his limitations.
When there is a emergency you do what you gotta do.

 

Well, it is, or it ain't. Which is it?