The Fuel Hauler Thread

You just never know. Sometimes you’ve gotta do things that fall into the sketchy department. When loading lube oil, generally they want two full loads of clear diesel (not red) to flush out vapors n such. I’ve seen guys end up with a trailer with a previous load of gas. They’d climb up there to stick clothes pins on the lip of the dome to crack it to release the vapors going down the road before they got to the refinery. Not recommended.

If you work for an oil company that runs a tankwagon bobtail or lube oil truck, your going to be up top frequently. Sometimes I’ve pulled my hose up over the side to transfer product in an empty compartment to use that existing compartment for another product. Usually just if I needed that bigger hole. This was only done if we had our own loading rack in our yard. In another terminal, I’d unload all retain at a cardlock so as not to load on top of existing product at the refinery.

Possiblities are endless but you’ll be fine.

 

Ive been up there many times. We've had stations where the drop was on a hill and we had to go back to the terminal were it was flat and go up and stick the tank. There's been other times too for different reasons. It's no big deal if done right. That was in Las Vegas for ARCO.

 

Oh, you'll get up there at some point. Like mentioned, bad scully probe, compartment check like when a station's overfill alarm doesn't work, their veeder system is 500 gallons off and your jerkoff dispatcher likes to load past a stations 90% fill capacity.

 

It's doesn't take long for all those thing to happen. Lucky for us our dispatcher was out of town. So he'd call before any big changes.I had one night where all those things happened and to top it off I blew gasoline out of the dome. I set the compartment for the bigger compartment and that gasoline hit the dome at 600 gallons a minute.We loaded out of a third party loading rack but we were the biggest customer so they didn't lock me out. But man what a mess.

 

Man how'd that happen without probing out !?? I can only imagine the cleanup. Yeah, do this long enough all types of fun stuff happens.

My greatest terminal fubar was leaving my backpack in the employee parking lot after shift. (Some jerkwad parked practically in my trunk so I couldn't open the hatch to my SUV) Tired, outlaw HOS night, drove off without the bag. Get a call when I'm about almost home from ops manager. Said did I leave a bag in the lot ? oh sheitt. Tells me to haul ### back to the terminal.

I get there, it's a line of about 20 rigs around the gate.(start of morning shift) County PD, town PD, speak to a high rank dude and the terminal manager. A guy in a bomb squad suit walks me to the bag, tells me to open it and it's over. And so I thought my job there. Manager shrugs his shoulders n says hey, we were due for a yearly evac drill anyway. Boss says take the next day off and back to work.

 

It did prob out but it was loading so fast the gasoline just blew right by any safety device.It wasn't too bad to clean up just push all the gasoline into the drains that are made for spills.

Yeah, I had the the problem losing my clipboard by leaving it on the draw bar. There was this one time where I left it there made it back at the terminal and noticed it gone. I jumped in my car and found it right in the middle of this intersection. So I was out there dodging cars getting my clipboard back. You can see in my icon we drove truck and trailers and the picture is our small AZ truck. You could load almost 9000 gallons on that truck which has the small trailer. Our normal truck and trailers hold 12450 gallons and that what we drove in the city of LV.

 

A driver dropped 8900 gallons of regular into the super tank, so another driver and I had to go do the pump-out l. One of us stood on top of the trailer to make sure each compartment did not overflow, and the other Another stayed on the ground to operate the valves.

 

That's funny. When I just started with ARCO I dropped 3400 gallons of leaded regular into the super tank. Our color codes were just the opposite of everyone else. Regular was red and super was blue. I sat there for 10 minutes hoping that load would change colors.

I had to go on top of the truck many times. If I had a load where the drop was up hill I would return to the yard and go up and stick the tank. If I over fill a tank at the station, which happened all the time I would have to stick the tank. When you drive a small truck (8500 - 9000 gallons) you should never have to go up on the truck. But driving a super tanker with 12450 gallons on you'd have to all the time.

 

Cross-dropped USLD into 93 once. My fault being preoccupied with some b.s.. One of those stations with two reg tanks, a diesel and a super. Noticed that blueish tint in the fitting sight glass and had a mild heart attack. Shut it down and ran in to tell the guy to shut the pumps down. Luckily no cars got the blend. Had to hire an outfit to pump it out.

One outfit I worked for lost its parking privilege at the terminal because one of the new guys they hired got up on the tank in the rack. (After being warned before)

Had a scully indicator while loading. Finished topping off the rest, pulled out the rack and went across the street to get on top of the tank and wipe down the probe with water. After 10-15 mins, got a green, went back into the rack, subtracted what I already l had, loaded and booked to the station.

You're gonna get up there. We ran 12k wagons and 9s. Doesn't matter, nature of the beast. A real prudent pre-trip would be to get up there and check the compartments every time. When I was green, I did. If you're slip seating with a brain surgeon, you definitely should

 

I would open my internals in look at the sight glass. If it wasn't full no need to climb up.