Soon to be a rookie tanker driver

If a gas jockey says they never had a mix I’d believe them. If they say they never came close I’d think they are lying. Hooking up to the wrong fill will happen eventually. That is why you always, always walk your lines and check your tags. I will say that realizing that I was about to have a mix was better than a cup of coffee to wake me up.


Here is another thing I always thought was interesting. The real danger of making a mistake is not so much when you are new. People are usually very cautious when new. The mistake usually happen after about a year. That is when you think you know enough to “save time”. The old dogs with clean records are the first to admit that they can easily make a mistake.

 

Had a coworker almost do that. Luckily the trailers had break interlocks on the headers set up for the loading rack. When he seen the truck move he pushed in the break interlocks and had someone pull his breaks for him. Quick thinking turned an incident into a near-miss.

 

Somebodies rear end is in a sling. This happened again yesterday at a station in Boulder!
Fuel Station Mix-Up: Dozens Of Cars May Be Damaged After Diesel Was Switched With Gasoline At King Soopers

 

MAN o MAN. I don't know where you came from but a tanker teacher you're not. There is a lot of driving items that need to be learned that are different than any other truck. Now I've driven freight, heavy construction equipment, specialized equipment and so on and each required specialized training on that type of truck. I retired hauling gasoline , the best job I ever had, so there needs to be some type of training on that specific equipment.

 

I pulled dry van three years. Now I'm pulling smooth bore tanks with food grade liquids. Have been for the past four years without incident and all without driver mommy telling me what to do and when to do it.

Is a new tanker yanker going to need training specific to dispensing fuel or chemicals? Yes. Of course. And that has nothing to do with driving.

But a veteran driver who has fifteen years of pulling flatbed is a purty safe pair of hands to pull tank any day.

 

My vote is for hauling gas but in what ever you do triple and double. Check before anything gets opened up... and when it comes to your truck either you do all the work or they do all the work don’t trust nobody. If somebody wants to help them it’ll help if they stand over there and keep yourself busy. If they try to hook something up they almost always do it wrong. So trust no one unless instructed to sit in the truck while they unload.
Be nosy when it comes to what your hauling if you go into chemicals. Ask what it’s used for what’s it made of how does it react to heat/cold. How many psi can you run it at?
If you’re hauling gas the name of the game preventing overfills and crossdrops.
a lot of people do things their own way but the way I was taught,once you load that compartment close it up soon as you load it so you can’t load on top of it. When delivering always try to drop your odd product first. Then only uncap one product/load(if a split)
Then still after wards triple and double check.

 

Thanks for updating..... being that I’m about to be new to the tanker world.... I was watching this thread closely.