Loading Racks

Im looking into fuel transport and ive heard of being trained or certified on different fuel racks for different locations. Are they all the same or just a different procedure going through the prompts? Also, ive heard that some are worse than others to load up at.

 

i heard you want all your fuel rack cards

 

So there's different ones for every terminal?

 

i guess. i dont really know. once checked into fuel years ago. the guys i talked to said its all about the rack cards

 

There can be many vendors at any tank farm. You must be certified on each one. They issue you a card. You use the card to fire up the machine. Enter a few digits on a touch screen and whoosh your tank gets loaded. Every vendor is slightly different but basically the same info.

If a tank farm has a dozen vendors, your company will probably only use a few. So you might have 3 fuel cards for loading.

 

I just moved to fuel hauling last year and had to go through the certification process to get carded at eleven different racks. While every rack has similarities, they all have their own quirks and regulations. Some only needed three loads with a trainer before you were carded, while a couple needed more than ten loads. Some places want a walkaround, some you have to wait for the security gate to close, some you have to check in with the loaders, etc. The one real constant everywhere seems to be fr clothing and hard hat/safety glasses. The actual process of hooking up the arm is the same everywhere, but every one of our racks has a different computer system they use. Another thing you need to know on night shift is when and how long each rack is shut down every night for inventory, every one of ours is different. It’s not a hard job, but I made sure to write everything down for each place. After a dozen loads at each rack, their particular procedure will become second nature.

 

Yea they’re all the same yet they’re all different. The actual rack themselves are 99% the same. Scully- loading arms - vapor recovery. Slight differences in the loading heads. The differences are gonna be the muster points. What to do in emergency situations. Where your estops are located. You may have to sign and drop a bol in the box. Some places you can do a split load in the computer without removing your card. (Training and preferably writing down and double checking will prevent overflows)It’s all the same but different at the same time

 

Also once you get your first card the rest of the cards come easy it’s like taking the same test over and over again. Also some places just turn your card on after you load with a trainer so many times. Places that have multiple locations may even turn your card on after they know you’ve been carded at one of their other facilities. For me Sunoco just needed to see three bills signed by a terminal operator and it was turned on at 2 locations. Got carded at one marathon, the other one just wanted to watch me load unassisted.

 

Anytime you get carded at a rack, ask the operator what their procedure is if you Scully out. Because they are all vastly different.

We have three racks where I live. At one, if you Scully out you are finished loading. Take your BOL and go, and don't come back for 2 weeks because you're locked out.

At another rack, you take the arm off and drain enough fuel out of the compartment to make the sensor light turn off. Then you wash the fuel down the drain with a water hose and load your next compartment.

 

What is the term meaning"if you Scully out'?