switching to Tankers from Dry Van?

I was thinking the same thing. Get your feet wet with Schneiders tanker division, so you are not forced to take a crap tanker job somewhere else based on your lack of tanker experience. Having a year or 2 of tanker experience you should be able to get almost any tanker job out there. Then you can pick the company that best fits your needs.

 

Drive gently, take the off ramps at 15mph BELOW the advisory speed, keep your head on a swivel.

ANTICIPATE starts, stops, other driver's stupidity.

If you drive it gently the load will teach you what you need to know, without coffee, marbles, ping-pong balls, or any other malarkey.

Good luck! Tanks is where it's at, IMO.

 

Oh, one more thing: When hauling chemical ALWAYS wear required PPE. Yeah, the pickle suit is uncomfortable in the blazing sun, or inside a hot factory......

......But nowhere near as uncomfortable as a full body chemical burn. The suit comes off. The burn is forever.

 

Each load is different IMO and handles differently caustic will beat the crap out of you, latex not as much and some resins are thick as molasses nice and slow is the way to go, tanking keeps you on your toes never get complacent, throw all you've learned driving a van out the window check them mirrors more often than you'd normally would, leave lots of space.

 

Stick with Schneider if they have a tanker division most companies are willing to work with you if you've provided a good reason for transferring stay the course for at least 12 months. then maybe move on.

 

Tanking is a great gig. The surge is easy to control with shifting experience. The only thing that still bothers me is potentially falling off the top of the tank, lol.

 

I would try Trimac or superior before I went to Schneider. Hell I'd talk to my local QC terminal before Schneider.

 

he is already at the Great Pumpkin. might as well stay with them awhile

 

That was hurtful and uncalled for!

 

All good advice. There is one thing I like to add. When starting out select the gear that will move the truck without ANY throttle. x1Heavy, you brought up a subject that I've been teaching new hires for years. I too use the coffee trick with only one change. I have them set the coffee one top of the dash.

However, all I haul is gasoline and with our trucks there is hardly any serge. We run a truck and trailer setup and I wouldn't drive anything else. They are over-sized hauling 12450 gallons. On the truck we have the tank permanently mounted and it holds 3200 in the front compartment and 1550 in the rear. On the trailer we have 3 compartment with the front compartment holding 3250, the middle holds 1650, and the rear compartment holds 2800. Each compartment have baffles with bulkheads. It turns out that you hardly feel the load no matter how it's loaded. We do have an advantage that our trailers stay with the truck. That means we can have the brakes all adjusted to match. It's a great set-up and the T/T can get into the old stations with ease where a semi would have problems. I really don't know why the large gasoline haulers don't use truck and trailers out west.