The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

I bet it takes him 2-3 hours to unload that thing.

 

Can confirm because we use the same size trailer. 30-35 ton loads.

 

Here’s my question of the day. Why is it that you get down to maybe ten minutes or less from being empty and the dang silo fills up. That has to be the most frustrating part of bulk.

The standard instructions:

Uh, yeah take that last 5 minutes worth to our other plant 50 miles away.

Or

Uh, let me load a few trucks and then I can hold the rest.

Me? I just want to throat punch somebody. Lol

 

Thats the law of the land man. LMAO.

My favorite is hurry up the bakery needs the load just to get there and find out that that line broke down over night but they failed to tell our dispatch so you get there and sit tell they have room.

 

Not really.
Friend off mine hauls cement.
About a month ago he is unloading at a concrete plant.
They don't like to clean their dustfilters at said plant.
When he was close to finising they got clogged up completely.
Silo cover blew off.
Loud bang and the area covered in cement.
You would think can't get any worse...............
Plant is next to residential area.
Neighbours called 911.(remember the loud bang)
Police,firebrigade and ambulance on scene.
Friend got a mandatory trip to the hospital.

 

Yep, that is annoying. And inconsiderate on behalf of the customer. Can’t hold it? Don’t order it!!

I haul cement in metro ATL, which usually means the customer has another plant that isn’t too far away (15 or 20 miles), so it could be worse. Then we will bill them double freight on the whole load when they pull that crap. So I’ll get paid twice for the load. But it’s always the last load of my day when I’m just ready to go home. And often on a Friday LOL.

 

I brought a load of hydrated lime 350 miles to a sugar beet plant once and they forgot to tell the shipper that they had a small fire and were shut down.

I brought it back to shipper and blew it back into the silo. They charged them for me going both ways. I received pay for both ways. It was a win win for me that day. Lol.

 

I never had that problem with high-cal quicklime, but dolo would stick to the inside of the trailer like crazy. The higher your tank pressure, the worse it was.

 

Ha, yep! Some days it works out in our favor when things go sideways. A few months ago I had a load of slag cement that I had already pre-loaded the day before. Drove from Fayetteville, GA to a site at a power plant in Forkland, AL about 4.5 hours away. Dispatch called as I was turning into the main gate to tell me the customer had to cancel the load because it was too muddy on site for even their 4wd pickup trucks. I banged a u-turn and brought it on back. They paid for the freight there, and half rate for my trip back home. Made about $350 to drive around for 9 hours.

That was on a Friday. I took it back down there on Monday and got paid another $233 for the same load, and snagged a backhaul from B’Ham on the way back. Not too shabby.

 

I picked up a load of injection carbon once for a steel mill in Indiana. It was a blind shipment, and I had strict instructions to not tell the receiver where I loaded it. So I go trucking to Indiana, arrive at the appointed time, only to be told I'm not on their schedule.

I sat a mile down the road at a truck stop for two days only to be told to take it back to the shipper. Had four days tied up in that little disaster, but I was paid double for the load plus 48 hours detention.


The most irritating thing I hear now is when I arrive at a concrete plant right at my appointment to be told "I need to get five or six trucks outta here before it will fit, it might be about two hours, the job is in hold. Take a nap, we'll call you." Go take a nap for an hour to be told the same thing.