How do I get Tanker experience?

All I can say is that Schneider is the only company I know of that will hire new drivers to pull a tanker and will train them.

And yes Rick, QC's orientation was a joke!!

 

I just saw your post. You will make the most money in LTL, I just quit SAIA and I would have made $ 80,000.00 this year, but the most enjoyable driving I ever did was hauling gas/diesel. It only paid about $ 50,000.00 though. Hope that helps

 

Consignees have to sign the ticket saying they product is hooked to the proper storage tank and there is room in the tank for the product . Sometimes they are wrong !

More often than not...... and if they are wrong then you are wrong. Carriers will protect the customer first. Seen this a few times before with untimely terminations for mixing and overflowing....being said : I trace my lines, hook up if allowed and calculate. If I don't like what I see the chemical stays on the truck and if "Johnny did it " then I give them a quarter to call Johnny. Lets get him in here !

99% of the gas hauling in Houston is contract and cheap. The majors are gone. Exxon does have a fleet of like 10 here but their guys are very unsure of their jobs. And like GH said next to impossible to get on.

Schneider and Prime have tanker fleets and they will train you. Give them a clean year and you will be able to move on easily. The 2 yr 200k req. is a screening tool. Put on a good show at interview and they will hire you.

JMO

 

Leaman actually did have a school for new hires with no tank experience but had otr experience. It was in Indianapolis, started sometime in the early 90's. All new hires{including lease operators} without tank exp had to attend for a week. They even had an old tank there with about 1000 gal of water in it for the guys to pull around the yard to get a "feel" of what surge was like. The problem with it was the guy they put in charge was a moron with no driving experience, and even less unloading liquid. He was a safety man before the school. As an example of how smart this guy was, he was the safety man for the midwest region. He did log audits at our terminal and we had one guy that would log sleeper berth time in a day cab. He ran the reload system in a day cab and slept on a padded board between the seats. Luckily he wasn't very tall. This "safety" man never caught him. Its no wonder they got gobbled up by Quality.

 

Yep, tanker drivers make better money. OFC-Schmidt Liquid Trucking (near Omaha) will hire you if you have a year of any kind of class A experience. Paid training of 1-2 weeks on tankers. Only problem is you'd have to move to Omaha or one of their lane cities (Des Moines, Sioux City, Kansas City etc). Fleet average at OFC-Schmidt was $55K in 2011, and expected to go above $60K in 2012 with a recent pay raise. You also get home weekends and occasional weeknights. $60K and home weekends is hard to beat, as you probably have found out already. I know a guy who makes $80k/year at OFC-Schmidt but he chooses to be out a lot more than most guys.

 

experience eh......well just take big ole garbage can, half fill it with water, strap it to your back....now bend over..then...start running and stopping real quick.....that will give you all kinds of tanker experience.