hauling gas vs chemicals

We started doing chemicals local at our jax terminal. We only have one trailer and one driver for it. He used to do it 5 days a week but it doesn't pay enough.

He makes $1500/week or so and when he switched to chemicals it was more like $900/week. Plus he said it was 4 hours to load, 3 to unload, so he could only do one load a day.

Our chemical division is OTR. So now he's doing gas again and they're probably keeping our Chem trailer for when we get a couple sleeper trucks and start running regional stuff.

I wanted to do chemicals until I talked to him about it. I'm sticking with fuel for now. It can be dirty work (for us anyway) but I'll make more money

 

You got that right the people at a community rack can be, well you know. It's such a difference when you're loading at your own terminal. But I will say that there are some drivers that should not even be around any loading facility and that's the types the tank farms deal with. And then they take it out on everyone. We've all made mistakes loading and it's judged by how big the mistake is if you get any days off. We were also lucky to be the largest company there so the tank farm couldn't push too hard.

Those problems you list here are just dumb mistakes and shouldn't happen. Do they do.

 

TIO2 is 22.5 # per gal. 2350 gal was a max legal load, I know as I loaded it out of a DuPont 'TiPure' sparge RR tank cars.....

We used a 5000 gal 'latex Tight fill' trailer and it still felt like a huge bowling ball back there!

4000 gal would be 90,000# of payload!!!!

 

Tanker is usually paid by weight. Load up and dodge scales...

 

We haul ti02 (or hauled, it's been a couple years since I've done one) in regular 7,000 gallon tanks. Oddly enough the front to back slosh wasn't awful, but man you could feel it walk up the wall going around curves. Very unnerving to me.

 

I've hauled a couple of different chemicals but the one that really sloshed around on me was ferric. The liquid oxygen doesn't slosh at all or I just couldn't feel it.

 

It's not as simple as chem vs fuel. What kind of fuel? Avgas, jet, diesel, gasoline? Is it station work, wet hose work, or airports?
Same can be said for chemical work. Is it stuff like bleach, acids, or alcohol based? Some require minimal ppe while other you will look like your going to space. Lol

With that said I've hauled oil, chem, fuel, cryo, and compressed gasses.
My top two are cryo and fuel, for having steady work and cryo for being the least back breaking, cleanest, and no toxic fumes or vapors.

 

I had to choose recently between hauling fuel, or cryo....... QUICKLY found out ALOT of cryo drivers are former fuel haulers.......


VERY happy I chose cryo (although I’m still training, I love what I see so far)

note: in my area fuel haulers make more hourly than I do.... still happy though.