The Fuel Hauler Thread

Don't laugh.

 

So I got stuck with super slicks. I thought it was soild grass and it was mush.

 

It was. I was only stuck a little. I need a nuge and I would have been out. Lesson learned.

 

You'll hit the overfill alarm. At an ARCO station, a loud alarm will sound outside near the fills, and the veedor root printout will spit out a warning printout stating you hit the overfill. This happened to me last week actually, I was dropping 4,000 gallons into a set of manifolded tanks (tanks which balance themselves out) and the manifold was not distributing the fuel as fast as I was dropping it; figure at 800 gallons per minute since I was double-hosing two separate compartments of 87 into the same set of tanks. The overfill alarm went off and people fueling up looked very frustrated. Had to have a talk with the station manager and reassure him I wasn't flooding the station with fuel, and that the manifold just hadn't distributed everything yet. At first glance, the load fit; the combined ullage was well below the 90 percent mark. But each individual tank had to be taken into consideration, which i failed to do. At that point, a few things could happen. The station manager could complain to you, to your boss. If the station gets audited by the air quality people, I think they could get fined for exceeding the safe fill mark.

You'll have problems if you exceed the 90% mark by 10 more percent, if you know what I mean. You'll notice a "perpetual flow" in your sight glasses on your hoses and trailer, and that my friend is the fuel not flowing. A spill is probably imminent at that point, and if that happens, this is probably the wrong line of work.

The most frustrating is when the station is closed and you have to take stick readings and compare it to a tank chart to determine 90% ullage. Especially at night, in the rain. I had this happen to me earlier this week, taking stick reading after stick reading with no clear measurement, getting soaked even through my rain gear. Took 1 hour and 15 minutes to sort that mess out and get that station finished up. Had another one tonight that was equally as horrible, station was closed, no veedor root, and on top of that the station was so tight that I couldn't take a stick reading on the premium since the trailer was literally on top of the fill.

 

Ok, good stuff. At least I know that it's something I should not play with. My company has us call dispatch if our measurements say it is going to be over 90%. And they usually just want us to wait until the tank drops to a level where we can add the rest without going past the 90% mark. So basically that's why I was curious about filling it past 90%. I figured if it's only going to be a small bit past the 90% that there's no point in waiting around or calling dispatch. But now that your telling me the stores get alarms and all this and that, it's definitely something I'm not going to play around with haha.

@moloko Yea, I had someone tell me to be careful on the manifolded tanks because of that very reason. He said especially if a smaller tank is manifolded to a larger one, and you start dumping into the larger one first it will change how much room you have available when you start dumping into the smaller one. And so sometimes it won't even out fast enough. The only tip he gave was to dump your compartments at the same time so it stays as even as possible (if your using two hoses obviously).

Thanks for the info

 

You will hit that alarm occasionally because even if you don't go over 90% the product can slosh around and set off the alarm. There's one station we go to where the VR reads high, so on my last compartment I will go stand by the alarm so I can turn it off.

 

^^This guy has been doing this longer than me.

Hey guys, on an unrelated note, I just had to take traffic school on a speeding ticket in my personal vehicle. There was no way of beating the case. That was my only violation. How would this affect me getting employment at one of those better paying companies down near LA? Thinking Tesoro or Sentinel. Do you think those companies would hold this against me, it's not for points and it's the only derogatory mark on my record....still considering Los Angeles, I just have to get some affairs in order before hopping out.