1st Year Hauling Fuel in Jacksonville, FL

Taxes not done just yet, haven't gotten my w2, hopefully soon though.


We haul 8800 gallons of gas. That's a legal load for our trucks with pumps. If I'm in a truck without a pump I can swing 8900 gallons.

 

No, the 4 wheelers will cut you off and slam on brakes. They don't care, they don't pay attention. They'll treat you like any other truck. It can be very nerve wrecking when you're in rush hour traffic and they constantly do that.

I once dropped diesel then switched the hose on the trailer but forgot to switch the ground connection. Almost pulled the handle before I sensed something wrong. I followed the hose and switched the ground connection. My trainer always taught me to get into a routine that way if you break it, you can feel in your gut something wasn't right. So I caught it before touching the lever on the trailer. Now I always follow my hose before pulling the lever.


The fumes you get used to. Most stores have vapor recovery which uses two hoses. I hook a product hose up to the tank then a smaller vapor hose up to the vapor connection. It keeps the whole thing a closed loop. Some stores have faulty vapor so you'll smell it every now and then.

 

Our trailers only allow up to 9400 gallons, 9200 on the newer ones. I get paid the same whether I take 7500 or 9200.

I usually load whatever dispatch sends me, company pays overweight fines. Though if they send me an overweight load, and i know im going to cross scales, I usually just cut it back to legal weight, mainly to avoid a delay.

 

I will add, the vapor clings to your clothes. I get used to it so much that I don't smell it but when I lived with my brother I went home and was talking to him. He told me to go take a shower because I smell like $3.80 a gallon lol.

I also don't wear my shoes into my apartment on the carpet. I take them off on the tile and my clothes go straight into the washing machine. I use extra detergent and oxy-clean to get the fuel smell out. Though if I have a big stain from diesel on my clothes I just throw those away. Learned the hard way just how difficult it is to get diesel out of clothes.

 

Yeah. I finally moved up here, glad I did. Being 20 minutes from work is real nice and yeah our yard is at 21st and tallyrand. I see yalls dump and flatbed trucks all the time in that area.

 

What do you mean by load pay for hauling fuel? Is it normally hourly where you are?


They pay after 1 hour, $10/hour. Since I started I've only used it once. In my pay that was what the $10 was for where it says waiting pay or detention, whichever I wrote. I hardly ever have to wait more than 30 minutes to load working nights. Every now and then I have to wait because the rack is down for inventory but if that happens I can swap my loads around and go load at a different rack then come back when this one is up again. Or I can turn the load in all together and choose a different load or go home depending on the situation