Gas Haulers Advise

Yes leaded, it was some time ago.

 

We load 12,450 gallons of gasoline but that's the legal amount. You can stuff the truck and get on 14,000. We also have 8 axles but the one behind the steers is a drop axle. I see that your truck pivots in two places as well. But our pivot points are located in a different place. We have no fifth wheels to deal with and the trailer pivots right behind the truck and where the permanent turntable is located on the trailer. We can drop the trailer but the tank on the truck is fixed to the tractor.

They are very easy to back and if you get into a very tight place and can not get out you can do an old trick and walk the trailer over just enough so you can get out. I've tried it a couple of times and it works. When you're empty you lock the power divide in and back up and pull down on the trailer brakes hand valve. The trailer brakes will lock up and you'll slide the trailer over as far as you want. You can put water down to help but with the station being slick anyway it works without any problems.

I don't think we could drive your set-up in the states with that much weight on a set of axles. I don't really know but I haven't seen that type of set-up down here. Maybe because you would have a hard time getting in and out of the stations. I would love to drive it thou and see how it rides. Ours are just like cars. When your loaded you just do not feel the bumps all that much. Even when we had cab overs they rode good.

 

Trucker 101 thanks for the info I will be taking those idea's to are safety guy. If these steps were in place alot of are new driver's might not of made such bad error's. This company seems to sorta just ram new drivers thru training and send them out to fend for themselfs.

 

Your welcome, glad I could help.

 

We just carried one stick. We would unload diesel first then flush the hoses with gasoline. Luckly, we hardly ever hauled diesel and would farm it out. We just moved to many gallons of gas to worry about diesel. I saw that show about truck stop in America and the owner said he sold 150,000 gallons of diesel a month. We have stations that sell over 250,000 of gasoline a month!!

You might want to check with your boss and see if it's ok to use the electronic reader in the store for your gauging, it's much more accurate. I also recommend that you carry with you the tank charts for the type of tank you're droping into.

As for the conditions when droping, what can I say. You have to deal with it and believe me I've been on my knees scooping out water from the fill box. But hey that's why you get the big bucks right?

 

I know one of our dedicated store chains stopped letting us use the electronic print out. They were complaining that we were not putting paste on the stick to check for water. I personally would just check the print out to see if the water levels were high, I mean it tells you on the print out how many gallons of water are in the fuel. Funny thing is, I noticed that stores with ethanol would usually have very little water in their fuel. Now the stores that were conventional usually had high amounts of water in them...
As for frozen drop lids, I'm in Texas not alot of bad winter weather down here!!!

 

The reason that the tanks that had ethanol in them showing low water is because the ethanol soaks up the water. You would have to have a lot of water to start with if it even shows up at all. Next time you see someone adding a water removal additive try to read the contents. If they list the contents it will say "this product contains ethanol".

When I was working I never depended on the electronic readers. It was just too time consuming to go into the store and get them. Now the company requires the readings from the in store gauge. They are the most accurate if you don't have the right tank gauge for that type of tank. But if you do I can get the same readings. I don't mean a standard gauge for 10,000 gallon tank, but a gauge that would be from the same manufacture of the tank that's in the ground. I had about 10 different sheets of gauges and I knew exactly what the inches would tell me. I also knew exactly when the overflow would slam shut so I stuffed the tanks all the time. I know there's an 90% fill cut off but we never went by it. The stations just sold too many gallons to get caught. In fact if I was 50 to 100 gallons short I would still go ahead and unload because it didn't take too long for the station to sell that much. 12,450 gallons in the ground in 20 minutes.

Paste the stick??? Once a year when ethanol came in. There was no need in the desert, besides our tanks would move so much gas that the ethanol took care of any build up there was in the large above ground storage tanks. Maybe because it was a community tank farm and they were on top of the problem.

Texaco didn't thou. Look at Texaco's tank farm. You'll see a dome over their gasoline tanks. That came about because of a problem they had in Las Vegas that cost them millions. Texaco had their own above ground tanks and loading rack at our farm. We were all changing over to ethanol back when it was mandated at the same time. The Texaco drivers would stop and ask us if the gasoline looked any different than normal and it wasn't. They kept loading their trucks until a Texaco driver called into management and told them the gasoline was looking like a milkshake and someting was wrong. The Texaco management just told them it was ok and keep working. After a while the drivers all knew something wasn't right and they stopped loading. They wanted a tech to check the product. Sure enough the gasoline with ethanol had coagulated from the water in their large storage tank. Of course we had to sneak over and get a sample and it was just like the drivers said. A thick milky milkshake that could hardly pour. All of the stations that used Texaco gasoline in Las Vegas plus the surrounding states had to have their underground tanks pumped out and steam cleaned. It took months to complete and they were also responsible to any customer that had car damage. I guess they should have listened to their own drivers, the ones that handle the product everyday and don't use a book from a desk to dictate policy.

 

We try really hard to avoid hitting the 90% mark for our dedicated customer. Before they stopped letting us use the electronic print out you could look on the print out to see where you 90% was at, and if it was going to put you over I would call dispatch and usually split the load with another store. One thing I hate though is some of the stores do not have a vapor recovery system, all they have is the crappy vent tube up on the canopy or off to the side, which hardly vents at all (ESPECIALLY DURING THE SUMMER!!!!) Alot of times if I am at a store with no vapor recovery an I have a load of reg no lead and super, I will unload both at the same time, and once the super is done just leave the hose hooked up and it will help vent down the reg no lead. I've heard of some guys that if they have just a straight load of reg no lead with no vapor recovery, the carry an extra gauge stick that is broke off just to the height of your turn down. They stick it down the drop to keep the overfill cap from slamming shut on them when it begins to pressure up on them. One thing I always wondered though was how that worked for all the different tanks you drop into. If you ask me thats a good way to lose a gauge stick and get popped red handed bucking the system!!!

Texas does have bad weather, but as far as bad winter weather I'd say we get it maybe 2 or 3 weeks outa the year and that's it!! (At least where I'm at) It's nothing compared to places up north where you got it November thru April!!