Chemical vs cryogenics

Cryo driver here. One of the first things they ask you here is “how good are your backing skills?” We might do tanker work but most deliveries involve backing up to the tanks. Some are easy and some are really tight. Or even at one plant I have to back in from the street and reverse all the way through the plant while honking my horn and getting out before I make a left or right. But that’s rare lol. Most are easy backups. And if you find yourself not being able to safely backup then you let them know and they’ll send you somewhere else. Safety is always first here.

Days typically run from 9-14 hours and if you have low or no seniority then you’ll be working weekends with an afternoon to night shift start.

Work is very easy and the most you’ll do is lift that small hose and hook up from your tank to customers. Hardest part is standing there for an hour until you’re finish unloading. But you’ll get used to it.

 

Cryo really isn't all that hard, or particularly dangerous if you're not being a moron with the product. Hydrogen is a bit scary in my opinion, so I mostly stick with nitrogen, oxygen, argon. I'm currently working on Co2, which itself is pretty high in the pressure realm (about 300 PSI static in the tank) so I treat it pretty gingerly.

The good thing about most of your cryo work, it's nice and clean. Yeah, you'll go into metal mills, fab plants ETC and they're muddy but that's pretty much the worst of it. Most of your hospital o2 tanks are serviced by pup tank trailer and straight trucks. The largest hospital o2 tank I've seen at a hospital is UPMC Hammot out by Erie, PA at around 30,000 LB's of o2 which is about 3/4 of a full tractor trailer load, so it's usually just hit by a tandem pup trailer.



I know guys that work in hazmat chem jobs, and it's been a bit of a rocky road for a few of them. One guy I know had acid splashed in his face while he wasn't wearing his face shield. He ended up getting fired for not following policy and did some damage to his eyes, thankfully he recovered but still.