When a hazmat tanker parks next to you at the truck stop?

Don't be. The big boomers are so difficult to detonate, you could almost say they're inert. I've seen shaped charges impacted so hard it knocked all the liners out, and they still didn't go off.

The smaller explosives take electricity to set off, and they're in anti-static bags, and the wires are shunted together. It would take a plane crashing into the trailer to set anything off.

Lulls me right to sleep.

 

I am a smoker and never felt uncomfortable around the hazmat stuff. I use an ashtray in the truck, or field strip the butt and dispose of it properly. If the hazmat parks to my driver side, I simply sit in the passenger side or get out and go for a walk while having a smoke. At least hazmat is contained in the tanks. Hay is something that gets hauled that drivers need to be careful around when smoking. No hazmat placards, but a stray spark will burn the whole load and truck down and possibly several nearby vehicles If a hay hauler is next to me, I will absolutely take a walk before lighting up. It is my choice (addiction) to smoke, but I am aware of my surroundings when I do so. It is all situational awareness, and we all need to do our part to keep ourselves and those around us safe out there.

 

THIS RIGHT HERE!!!

Loud engine, loud exhaust, APU, reefer, all good. The annoying AF “pspspspspspsp poof” sound over and over again drives me insane.

 

I never worried about hazmat trucks parked. It's when they're moving that I worry about them. In the 40 years I've lived in my little northern California town, 3 accidents come to mind involving tankers in my area. One was a fuel tanker in a tunnel near Oakland that got into an accident and killed I think around 30 people back in the 80's. Then just a few miles south of me, a truck rear-ended a tanker and exploded killing at least 3, and the third was a full fuel tanker that overturned on an offramp 4 miles from my house and caught fire. It burned nearly a city block and melted the offramp. When it comes to dangerous chemicals besides fuels, I worry much more about trains than I do trucks. There have been a number of train accidents over the years where a derailed trains has caused mass evacuations and quite a few deaths, usually from chlorine.

 

That's Ammonium Nitrate, aka 34-00-00. It's the same stuff used in the OKC bombing in the 90s. Its a solid nitrogen product, and is now very highly regulated. My company doesnt deal with it anymore due to the level of regulation.

Anhydrous Ammonia is a gas/liquid and is highly deadly if breathed in large quantities. My company buys several hundred thousand gallons of it each year to use in a chemical reactor (along with acid and water) to create 11-37-00 liquid fertilizer. Once the reaction is complete the end product (11-37-00) is completely stable and safe... Its commonly used as fire retardant and dropped on wild fires from airplanes.

The Anhydrous Ammonia itself basically dehydrates a body at a very rapid rate... From the inside out. A rapid discharge into the atmosphere of say a tanker load would cause an immediate evacuation of everything downwind for at least 1 mile, if not 2 or 3.

 

The boiling point of anhydrous ammonia is below zero. I’m not sure exactly what it does to the body but the guys that haul it say that if you’re going to your emergency water tank on your trailer it’s already too late.

 

To the original poster --

Based on all the above responses....one can reasonably conclude that....

in many cases...it is FAR MORE DANGEROUS to:

• get married;
• drive in regular urban, big-city traffic

....than to park next to a loaded hazmat tanker.

--Lual

 

Anhydrous ammonia can blind you. Permanently.

 

'Spec' hazmat trankers are built to withstand a lot more than most other trailers and are often built with additional safety actors built in as the major manufacturers were overbuilding for years at the request of their largest customers.

My maintenance manager from the 70's ended up being 'Mr. Trailer' for chemical leaman once told me that their trailers were built with 100% addtional strength and I know Matlack also overbuilt.

I was dispatching at a DuPont plant that made several fuming acids.

A load of Sulfur Trioxide [SO3] was cut off on the NJ turnpike at the split from car/truck to east/west and ended up on it's side blocking the 4 lane 'transition' just north of Newark Airport.

The safety man from the Newark regional office reached the scene just as the first wrecker the Troopers called was attempting to drag the trailer to the side.

Telling the trooper he needed to stop the wrecker if he wanted to live he stopped things just as the cable tightened and was starting to shift the trailer.

EPA estimated the fume cloud would have been 4 miles wide and ten miles long and the area drainage was towards the airport.

The wind as blowing towards Manhatten.

Took the rest of the day to upright the intact tank and returning it to DuPont for off-loading.

Leaman and DuPont had about 1/2 million in each of the 4 SO3 tankers and this one was cleaned and returned to Heil for rebuild.

The factory, after stripping the wrappers and insulation found 6" of the head to barrel weld to be inverted [where the cable had tightened to drag it] and they did not understand why it did not fail and it would have if not stopped from dragging it.

I'd be more afraid of a floor load of tires bulging the trailer walls than HM trailers though when I see a placard number I don't recognize I use 'CARGO DECODER' app on my phone to look it up.

 

i live in a community of 35k. Just outside of the population zone.

I swear we're accident capital of the country. Maybe the world.

The big city was much safer.

 

My trucks hauled consumables to mines for years, ammonium nitrate being a good portion of it. They kept us and the fuel trucks separated on the industrial road, but you sure look at tankers on the highway different when you have 42ton of that #### with you.