Attack Of The Sugar Crystals.....

Spent the entire week hauling sugar, and nothing but sugar! Monday morning, I picked up a preloaded trailer at one of our yard and headed for Robinson Il, down about 60 miles from Effingham. Went to a Hershey's Candy plant there. Got done, went back to Chicago, picked up another preload and headed back for the next morning.

On Wednesday, pulled in there and the receiving clerk found a missing seal on the trailer. Seems our new loaded made a booboo and didn;t put new seals on the trailer after loading it, and missed one seal that had been removed from the trailer on tuesday at a different location. So, the load got rejected, and I got the glory of dragging it all the way back to Chicago. We talked to the shipper, resealed the trailer, and sent it on it's way to another customer. I still get paid for the load, full price, and I didn't even have to unload it!

After spending Wednesday nite home, on Thursday, I took a load of sugar to Monroe Mich, to a place that makes generic brand cake mixes. Then home for the night, and into Chicago in the morning to pick up a load of sugar for a place in Elk Grove Village, near O'Hare airport. After that, I went to pick up my Monday morning load of sugar for Monroe, only to get a message that they wanted the load on Saturday instead. I was looking forward to the day off, but weekend loads pay extra and this works out to almost $260 for a Saturday delivery.

On Monday, back to Chicago, pick up sugar and head to Erlanger KY, to the people who make Mentos candy.

For some reason, I have been running a buttload of sugar lately. I always seem to do more sugar in summer than any other time, and I know why. You have to be very careful how you handle sugar in summertime. Allow your truck blower to make too much heat, and you can turn a trailer into a 50,000 pound piece of hard rock candy. I do it pretty well, and sometimes they just don't want to put the loads onto some of the other drivers. One fairly new driver the other day took over 5 hours to unload the trailer, and that doesn't make for a very productive day.

 

Mine is totally sealed and transferred within hoses. The bees never know I am there.

 

Sugar and dextrose are the trickiest, most complicated products to unload that I ever deal with. They are both very heat sensitive materials, so you have to be very aware of the blower temps that you are using to unload the product. For sugar, this is the procedure that I use and I can blow 50,000 pounds in anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on the quality of the vent system in the receiving silo.

I run the truck blower up at 1200 rpm, and build pressure to 8-10 pounds of pressure before opening the line air valve. I open the line valve all the way open, since sugar likes lots of air to carry it along. I build pressure with the top air, and adjust the pressure with the top air valve, usually running 9-10 pounds of pressure in the line and tank. I often use the lower aerators to help flow the sugar along, but you have to keep an eye on the temps of your hot line, particularly at number one hopper. if the piping gets too warm, you need to shut off airflow to any lines that are too warm. The further the air flows down the hot line, the cooler it gets, but this can be crucial in the hottest months, primarily July and August. When switching hoppers, I try not to let the pressure drop, and if it does go low, I shut down the flow and rebuild pressure until it is back where I want to have it.

Done right, and your blower temps stay steady around 225-250 degrees and you won't be in danger of cooking the sugar.

As for loading the trailer, I am assuming that you are using a vacuum trailer to load that has both a front and rear pipe. If so, I typically will load through the front pipe until I have the gauge on the back of the tractor about 41-42 pounds. Then, I switch to the rear tube and continue loading until I get the tractor gauge up to 60-61 pounds. However, if you are loading at a typical 12-14 inches of vacuum, you may have to idle down a bit for the back half of the trailer, or the high vacuum will throw the product towards the front. You can shake it back if there is too much on the front by "slamming" the truck backwards, but this will typically only move about 2000 pounds or so. Sometimes, when you have vacuum loaded, all you can do is plan your route carefully and avoid the scales.

I picked up one load of sugar a few weeks ago that one of our new loaders had loaded, and it was waay too heavy on the front end. I weighed the truck and had 52,000 on the combined drives and steers, and there was simply no way to adjust the load enough. It was a vacuum trailer, which was heavy to begin with, and they had over 51,000 in the trailer. We prefer to send vacuum trailer out with loads of 45-46k on them, so I was grossing right at 82 with full fuel tanks. Took a little bit of creative routing to make it to where I was going, but I made it okay.

I can unload lime in about a hour and 15, but most lime places had pretty good pressures and I could run the truck and blower pretty hard. most food grade places limit you to 8-10 pounds, and a lot of my industrial starch places limit to us to 6 pounds to the silo, and they take 1.5 hours or so to unload.

My personal best time is a dog food plant in Des Moines Ia. They simply unload you into a pit. You back in, hook up a hose to a 4" pipe into the pit. They put a tarp over the pit and pull a vacuum in the pit to keep the dust down. You can run the trailer and the blower pressure until the popoff's are just sputtering, and I can unload 50,000 pounds of flour in under 30 minutes! I always refer to them as my "domino loads". 30 minutes or it's free!!!!