Tanker truck exploded closing Long Island Expressway for 10 hours

The one draw back to hauling fuel, you must be on your game all the time.

Mark

 

How awful! My prayers and kind thoughts to the drivers family.

 

that's not only with fuel trucks,you have to pay attention with any combination,so you can make it home to your families.

 

I haul gas here in Ohio. Before that I ran the road for over 10 years, a majority of my runs to the east coast and NYC area in particular. Not once do I remember seeing tanks over there any larger than those that we pull here. And the max capacity is about 9000-9500 gal. (depending on set up and manufacturer). Other than the guys out west that can pull double tankers, Michigan is the only state that allows for larger tanks. And that is because of the higher weight limits.

When I pull a load it is 8800 gallons of gas. That puts me just under 80,000lbs. When I take diesel (usually only 1000 gal to our stations) I cut the gas to adjust for weight. Depending on temperature, grade of gas, and ethanol content a gallon weighs about 6-6.5 lbs/gal. So they are telling me this guy was carrying 72,000 lbs. of product??

All this is because I hate when the news embellishes stories to make their paper or TV news show sell. Just like "Truck driver kills four in DUI accident", then you read it was some 80 y/o in a Chevy S-10. It's always a bad thing when you have an accident in a gas tanker, no matter how much you are hauling.

 

New York State does have a system of overweight permits, which are basically grandfathered to some carriers, but aparantley can be sold to others. Not every bulk carrier has/uses these permits but when I drove for Mystic Bulk Carriers (now Anchor Tank lines) a few years ago they had 12, 500 gal. petroleum tankers in NY.

I was based out of NJ, so I never drove one, but I did haul bulk cement in the city sometimes and remember being loaded with GCW # 125,000#

 

My tank holds 12,200 gallons and that's what we load. NYS Class 1A divisible load permit covers it up to 107k pounds.

 

7600 gallons of fuel or 9000 gas is my limit and glad of it!!!

 

its still gonna blow up just the same as any other amount...

 

Negatory my friend ... if loaded it is most likely to burn ... and if empty and only hauling gas fumes picked up from the vapor recovery it will most likely detonate. Methinks I would rather detonate than burn ... if i had a choice of how I would rather depart this planet.

The above post simply was a statement concerning weight ... 7600 fuel or 9000 gas weigh the same on my tank ... 80,000 lbs