The Fuel Hauler Thread

Yes sir! I used to dread getting into a truck after the last load was a full load of kool-aid (red diesel) or clear pump job. So the product hose not only has diesel residue, it was usually #### near full. Had to be careful hooking that up at the station

 

I've seen a lot of talk on this forum about Williams Tank lines being a good company to work for. I'm moving to Reno, NV next week and both Williams and Flyers energy are hiring like mad. Any thoughts about which one i should go with? I have a lot of experience here in texas hauling crude oil so going into fuel hauling seems like a no brainer. Im leaning toward Flyers cause i talked to a driver who said it was a good yard with lots of work . He said i could get about $25 hr for transfer tanker and $21 for bobtail .

 

Yea, I've done it a few times where I had one vent cracked for the diesel and the other hooked up to the gas vapor. Then I started thinking about it and started wondering if the vapors I'd be sucking up from the gas tank would just shoot out of the cracked vent for the diesel. So I guess I was right haha.

Now lets say I'm dropping diesel and gas with a single vapor hose hooked to the gas recovery. Let's say the underground tank has positive pressure (what does that mean even?) and the two products dropping at once is too much for it to handle, as you say. How will I tell? Will it just make like a whistling noise, or will I see vapor getting pushed out of the hose heads?



Yea I have a ton of trouble waking up for my shift. Been on nights for so long, and I always thought that once I landed a day shift I would have nothing to complain about. But now I see the truth haha. Today I was just counting all the delays that would never happen on night shift and I lost track lmao. I'm definitely gonna sit and think on it for a few weeks, but right now I'm looking at the long term ... and I don't think I could deal with the immense amount of crap you have to put up with on days .... and all for less money. I know very well that night shift is not all unicorns and rainbows, but I don't think I have the patience for day shift.

 

I think Williams MIGHT be your better option. You'll make more and your benefits will be excellent. You won't be getting any time and a half, but the benefits will be better than Flyers. Flyers however, will give you a good 4/3 schedule. Probably not much opportunity for OT. Williams will give you a 5/2 5/3 schedule and they'll fly you in for orientation to Stockton. Let me know what happens, I'm kind of curious about the Reno branch at Williams.

 

I don't know the technical term if there even is one. I just know that sometimes the vapor is a vacuum (it sucks in when you hook up), or neutral (nothing happens when you hook up), or under pressure (vapor blows out when you hook up).

When you unload, the product in your tank is displaced by the air/vapor in the ground tank, as you know. 8 gallons is about 1 cubic foot, so if you're unloading 2 products at once at ~800gpm, your tank is sucking in 100cfm. Now if the pressure in the ground tank spits out more than 100cfm I think you will vent.

A good way to test is to light a match next to your open vapor port. If your trailer blows up, you were venting.

 

I was watching a guy do a drop across the street and noticed he had two hoses dropping fuel but only one vapor hose. I did this once but my second hose was dropping diesel. He was dropping regular and premium at the same time but he only had one vapor hose going to the regular tank. Being a new fuel hauler I walked over and asked him about it. He said it's a time saver and in over 10 years of hauling fuel nothing bad has happened dropping two compartments with one vapor hose. So I'm asking here, is there any reason not to do this?

 

I have heard that the underground vapor lines are sometimes connected, on the regular and the premium, and this is how they can do this without venting vapors to the atmosphere. The vapors on the premium tank would be captured by the regular tank since the two vapor lines are connected. Someone with more experience, correct me if I am wrong--this is what my coworker told me. But this is a risky situation, I think. There's no way to know absolutely for certain, if those lines are connected. It's asking for big trouble with CARB and your company to do this, and god forbid an incident occurs where that vapor is actually venting to the atmosphere and an ignition source (like idiots smoking, idling next to the fills, or a random spark...) is present. You can check out youtube videos on what happens when you drop without a proper vapor recovery connection.

 

I will do that at specific stations. My trainer had told me that if the vapor stacks at a gas station are set up as follows (4 vapor stacks; far left and far right are the same size and shorter than the middle two; two middle stacks are the same size and larger than the far left and far right) then the vapor is manifolded and you can use one vapor hose. I haven't had any problems with it. But any other time I use two vapors.

 

I am curious, how many arms does your racks allow you to load with at once? I know most of ours allow a max of 3 arms running at once, but a couple of them allow 4. However, at the racks that allow 4 I rarely ever see anyone using more than 3.