Gas Haulers Advise

Don't take any short cuts with your safety or others. We set up orange safety cones around our work area, wear reflective vest. Try to get a intrinsically safe flashlight, "BUT" even if you don't DO NOT turn it on in the areas where gas vapors are. For Example, if you have the lid off and your standing over the hole, step away & turn on your flashlight.

 

Maps to every store would be very nice. We get ton's of call in loads from other companies in small towns you never know what to expect usually always a grocery load with 4 products to boot.

 

Our maps are now printed out with the BOL when you pull your loading card out. You might want to suggest to the company that they make some up. Ours started on a 5X8 card and had all the routes into and out of the station. Any notes on that station were listed there so there was no guessing. The maps were worth their weight in gold to a new driver or a common carrier because we are using larger than normal trucks going into some stations that were built to handle a bobtail.

Thanks to all who gave me good words. I'd also like to thank Gr8oldies for talking about the number one cause of accidents and mishaps. Complacency. That's an every day job reminder to all. It doesn't matter if you've hauled 1 year or 30 years once you get your routine down complacency has a good chance of sneaking in. You have to incorporate complacency fighters into your routine. It doesn't matter how you do it as long as you stop and tell yourself to check everything twice no matter how many times you've been to that station. Just about all of our loads are local and it's nothing for us to go into the same station 3 to 4 times a week. We have a couple of stations that get 2 loads a day so that's almost 25,000 gallons a day. We don't have set runs on our dispatch. You go to work with your load sheet and you'll have 5 to 6 loads a day and there's no set assignment for the truck. So you have to know over 75 stations and how the tanks are laid out so you'll load the correct way. It's check the tags twice then start the flow. So complacency has cost my company millions over the years.

 

The making of our site maps is a part of the safety dept's job. Our company won't make a delivery anywhere unless the safety people first go out & inspect the place & make sure everything is in order FIRST. And when we as drivers get there we check the tank lids, tags & the product well collar tag. If something is missing or wrong compared to the site map, no dropping any fuel till a call to safety is made. If they say nope, don't drop any fuel they reroute you to another place. And ALL your time is paid for while they are deciding. Not all of our loads are one drop loads but 80% are. And again, the site maps show us how load so we go to the right place first & the right product in the right compartment.

Talk to your safety dept & ask them to set something up, it sure cuts down on spills & mishaps & while your driving around trying to come in from the correct direction there is a greater chance of an incident. And we DO NOT park on the road & have to go looking for the tank wells either. In the winter time, the snow & ice MUST be cleaned away from our working area before we arrive or we won't drop the fuel either. Safety Safety Safety...In case your wondering, it's a non union place.

If you want to get a site map set up let me know & I can probably scan one for you or anybody else.

 

You all are 100% right on complacency. Double & Triple check everything. If you get distracted by somebody or something, STOP, and start over from the beginning. Along with checking product tags, our rules are: that once you have double checked the tank tag & collar & your compartment tag, you take the "extra" tank tag & walk the line(hose) from your compartment to the tank hook up & clip your "extra" tag on the outflow end of you hose after verifying one more time that everything matches.

When ever we have mixes it's discovered that, "walking the line" never took place.

 

I'll tell you it's a sick felling after you've dumped 4500 gallons of leaded regular in the unleaded super tank! I've even seen another company drop it's load in the wrong station. That's bad when one is Chevron and the other is ARCO. But we all know with the years come the stories.

 

Trucker 101, how many gallons can you load on that type of set-up?

 

I haul mostly all diesel to bulk plants & to the mine at Fort McMurray Alberta Tar sands & that's about 14000 Gallons of diesel. With gas it would probably get up to 16 to 17000 gallons. And it really varies with what trailer I have as there are 4 holes on some or 5 holes or 6 holes but it would be in that range somewhere.