Maybe someone has a good answer for this..

Hey Mr Gas Hauler ... sometimes I wish someone would notice me ... but I've always worked nights ... 6PM to 6AM ... since 1987. Can't make no money around Charlotte working days because it's just one big traffic jam forever. Yeah, Eagle does give you a uniform and a fairly new rig and I've been doing this for so long that there probably isn't too much that I havn't seen as far as delivering gas goes ... I know ... I know ... famous last words ... been mugged, robbed, hit over the head with a 2x4, knocked all my teeth out and called everything except a "child of God" ... but I endeavor to persevere. If I can just make it another 7 years I'll be there ... where ever that is!

 

Whining only makes you part of the crowd.......
Keeping your mouth in check and doing your job will land you respect...

 

And yeah ... there is alot of difference between company drivers and common carriers. I worked for an oil jobber for 15 years hauling only to his stores and that was pretty good only having to do about 30 different locations, but with a common carrier we are doing about 350 different locations. The attitudes are a little different because nothing is quite as personal as it was with the oil jobber ... you don't know people quite as well, some of the locations almost require a police escort to get in and out of safely ... but I always try to do my job the way it needs to be done and as conscienceously as possible. Lookin' my best sometimes becomes a challange with all the heat and humidity, luggin' heavy hoses around etc ... guess I'm just gettin' old ... but I try to keep puttin' one foot in front of the other.

Ya know, BP used to have their own trucks and drivers ... same with Conoco .... same with Marathon ... same with Exxon ... same with Texaco ... what happened ... I'll tell ya, all those common carriers kept stabbin' each other in the back for a quarter cent on the gallon to where the major oil companies decided that if those common carriers are foolish enough to haul for those rates ... then they can have the business. They sold all their trucks, laid off all their drivers and cancelled their insurance and the common carriers have all the business ... but they still ain't makin no money because they spent the last 20 years stabbin' each other in the back.

I don't have all the answers, don't even know all the questions, but I do worry sometimes about where this industry is headed.

 

"Working Class Patriot" ... love that handle.

"Whining" ... I don't think so ... talkin' shop is just what it is, it ain't something else ... no need to make it something else. Haulin gas ain't for cry babies, sissies, steering wheel holders or paper pushers either.

 

"Talking Shop" is discussing the aspects of a job..ie...
"That pipe I hauled required to be pyramid stacked, gut wrapped and belly strapped...with 4 stakes and 12 skids...."....

Whining is: "My boss is a d*ck...He made me work over two Saturdays in a row and I missed the games..."

There is a difference....I worked in the oil fields, refineries, transfer stations, and chased leaks....

I know whining...it's an industry perk....

 

Whooooooops ... my mistake ... so sorry.

Soooo you're on THAT end of the industry. Very interresting. I wish I understood that end as well as I do this side of the equation. I know the terminals are going bonkers trying to get everything set up for ethanol ... some are getting sub 87 octane gas to allow the ethanol to kick it up to 87 octane instead of regular and midgrade both being 89.

It's getting hectic trying to figure out all the different equations they are coming up with and none of the terminals are standardized ... they are all doing it a different way. For about 6 months they had us making out own blends ... gettin gas at one terminal and going to KM to pick up the ethanol ... now the terminals are trying to get "in line blends" functioning properly. I was loading some premium the other night at a terminal which puts in all the ethanol first and then adds the gas. After putting in the ethanol the line just stopped and went into a "check valve closure alarm" ... I'm sitting there with my finger up my B^## trying to figure out what to do next. If I stop the operation and restart it ... it will put in ethanol first again and I'll end up with twice as much ethanol as necessary. Ended up just parking the tank on the yard and marking it so day shift could figure out what to do with it ... they took it back to the terminal and had them pump that compartment out.

Then there's all the boutique blends for summer 7.8 RVP ... 9.0 RVP ... first there was high sulfer diesel, then low sulfer diesel, now there ultra low sulfer ... etc ... I mean ... when does all this insanity end. Ethanol ain't no answer .. it's a zero sum game!

 

I was doing that work before I went out on my own in 2004......
I also did dry utilities as well....

 

TANKER JOB TALK, SORRY.

I'm on the floor LMAO. We went through all of that way back in 1995. Lucky that we had a spur rail to bring in the ethanol. But we did our own blending but never did we load ethanol first. That was to easy. The temperature would change with the ethanol and you know what that does. For a few years we gave away octane but then we went through the sub-grades too. How can you pump back a load with ethanol without contaminating the tank? They watched us that close. A common carrier once loaded ethonal on top of diesel. They had to let the trailer set until it separated then pumped off the ethanol and then turned the diesel into transmix. The ethanol was then treated as hazwaste. It cost that company plenty

I know alot of the majors are shutting down but it's in areas where the truck has to travel some miles to unload. Our magical number was 160 miles. Anything above that was cheaper for the common carrier. But in the cities the majors stayed with their own because I could put 6 loads in the ground in a 12 hour shift when the common carrier would be lucky to do 4. Our Los Angeles terminal loads more gas per day than anyone else and it's called the fastest rack in the west. I understand if you live in an area where's there's not that many stations why you'd be leery of trying to get on with a major. But if you live in an area where there's 20 or more trucks at the terminal it's unlikely they will shut it down. Sure they are all streamlining the operations but they look at every part of the daily in's and out's before they close a terminal. One example I know of is years ago ARCO closed it's terminal up in Pacific Northwest and got a sweet deal with a dedicated carrier. ARCO pulled all their equipment out and then when the contract ran out the dedicated carrier jacked the price up so high ARCO refused to renew the contract and brought back their own trucks.

You could get on pretty easy with a major and your 401K transfers over and you're vested the day you start. That's the way we did it anyway and we were in line with all the others. Just look at the history of the terminal and ask a few drivers. The drivers know when or if they are going to shut down a terminal. With my company it's never been a surprise and we've closed a few also. The smaller ones were always on the choppin block.

I guess we have different names out west than you do. A jobber to us is a truck that loads up and delivers to different job sites with that truck. I would assume that what you call a jobber is what we call a dedicated carrier. Those are the guys that you see pulling a trailer with Exxon or whatever on the tank and a different name on the cab door. That truck only pulls for Exxon. So we have common carriers that pull for anyone, then dedicated carriers that pull for one company, and then the major oil compnay pulling their own product.

Times are tough all over but with gasoline it stays the same. Someone has to haul it to the stations. It's just getting harder to find the right place to work out of.

 

Yeah Gas Hauler ... I see you on the floor laughing at us ... someday, I hope to be able to do the same with someone else ... but as slow as these terminals are going about straightening themselves up ... I'll probably be dead first.

BP was supposed to have had their "in line blend" up and running two months ago, but the company they contracted out with to do the piping went over budget about $4 million so they sent them packing and are starting all over with another company.

Yeah, this is all new to us and for 6 months we were making our own blends but for some reason they kept switching the blend ratios around ... got to the point where I was becoming a nervous wreck trying to figure out how they wanted it. Since our major customer wants his product pulled from a terminal with no blend arms he has decided to just make the blends for regular and midgrade the same ... and they're both hotter than regular. CBOB is available without ethanol at one terminal so you can go to another and add ethanol ... and at another terminal you can get CBOB with the ethanol straight from their own load rack.

Yeah I guess the terminology is a little different on the east coast. An oil jobber to us is a local oil company which owns it's own stores and their own trucks and delivers it's own gas to those stores, making it a complete owned and operated subsiderary of the local oil company. Major oil companies no longer have anything to do with the transportation or delivering of product to their own branded stores ... common carriers have cut rates so badly that there is no longer enough money in it for them to make it a profitable operation ... so they have let the common carriers have all the business. We don't really have what you refer to as a dedicated carrier out here ... we do have dedicated loads and dedicated drivers and dedicated trucks but only if the customer requests that.

Yep ... you're right ... things are tough all over ... but ya know ... I guess it's worth something to never have to worry about getting laid off ... though things have been a little slow this year ... made about 10% less than last year ... people are driving a little less than they used to especially when the price of gas was around $4/gallon last year ... and then the hurricanes really screwed things up for quite awhile. But ... still ... I'm happy to have a job where I can make as much as I do, even if it has been a little slow.

 

John I would never laugh at you, I'm laughing with you.