Freak Incident, reefer tank dropping fuel.

I was making a delivery one time and was backed into a warehouse dock.
Noticed fuel leaking from the drivers side fuel tank.
Found a piece of soft wood and tapped it into the fuel tank hole. The leak stopped, so I made it to the terminal which was about 250 miles away. Then I wrote it up and gave it to the shop.

 

In my case the box truck’s driveshaft not only punched a hole in the reefer fuel tank,but it also took out one of my air lines underneath the truck! Air pressure went from 124 psi to ZERO in less than 20 seconds,which just gave me enough time to get my truck safely on the shoulder (ironically behind the box truck).
Federal law says that any spillage exceeding 5 gallons mandates that hazmat be contacted.
That driveshaft relieved the reefer fuel tank of approximately 50 gallons of Pilot/Flying J’s finest biodiesel,some of which left a trail on I-70,the rest went into the drainage ditch!!SMH
Needless to say I had to contact my company(for a wrecker and hazmat response)and Missouri Highway Patrol (who in turn contacted the local fire department and their hazmat response team).
The icing on the cake is that the drivers of the box truck tried to “play it off”like they weren’t sure if my truck hit their driveshaft-umm, YES WE DO! The dashcam in my truck caught the image of your driveshaft in the granny lane before my truck hit it,plus the state trooper investigating later found it in a ditch after I had hit it!!
So Penske was officially on the hook for their box truck doing damage to my truck and the reefer fuel tank and the cleanup costs for spilled fuel,as well as the towing bill for my truck as well as their box truck!!
KA-CHING$$!!

 

Dang, no wonder our Penske lease is so expensive!

 

I agree and curious what a pic of it looks like. Reminds me of what's been going on down in north FL and south GA where some vandal has been using a cordless drill into sidewalls to destroy multiple tires on several different big trucks that were parked on get on ramps and other areas. I think they got video of the ####### but have never caught him.

 

The hazmat clean up industry is a straight up scam. I got hit with a massive bill earlier this year. But by the time youare forced to call them the authorities have are involved.

 

I’ve seen them have you pay to dig up dirt, send it to incinerator, then refill with clean dirt.

Can’t be having any dirty dirt.

 

That happens a lot. Years ago a PIE tanker driver went to sleep and ran off the road into an asparagus field near Walla Walla and turned over. He lost 7200 gallons of stove oil. The dirt was removed down to a depth of ten feet, twice the size of the spill area, trucked to an EPA approved disposal site and the farmer was paid for what his crop would have sold for. The dirt that replaced the removed dirt had to be exactly the same so the farmer scraped some up from his other fields and sold it to the remedial team.
I don't remember the total cost but it was just over a million dollars. The farmer was the only one smiling.

 

Well that does sound a little excessive, but you also have to look at it at that farmer’s point of view. He was just there on the side of the road growing asparagus and minding his own business, and a tanker comes along and dumps a tanker full of fuel onto his crops.

I wouldn’t say most of these cleanup outfits are ripping people off, they have to perform cleanup per EPA regulations. They will dig out any noticeable contamination, then they will test the soil, they will keep digging until they get a clean sample. In sandy soil I could see them having to dig down 10’ to get a clean sample. Now I would argue that after 3-4 feet anything below that probably wouldn’t hurt anything, if it wasn’t near a water source, but it’s the EPA.

 

To be honest it might have been easier just to continue driving until it was empty. Spreads out nicely over the road instead of pooling up and into the dirt with lots of evidence. Depending on the rate of the leak of course.

 

I read, a quart of oil pollutes a million gallons of groundwater. Imagine 7200 gallons.