Gasoline Loading

Exact time varies depending on where I go, but around thirty minutes to 45, an hour in some cases. One of the worst I had was when I pulled into the place to get loaded with fuel, and they had problems there. Dispatch rerouted me too another place. I killed about an hour and a half before I was given the go ahead to go elsewhere. However, I like that I am the one to load and unload. No forklift drivers to worry about or fearing that you will spend an entire day to unload. One of the best moves I made was to go into tanks from flats.

 

Way back when, Gulf Terminal, Oceanside, NY had 2 loading pipes for each product. You could hook up to 5 compartments at once, or load a 4 holer in less than 15 min. gate to gate. You hooked up and stood in a heated booth with a "deadman" button on the wall to start and stop the flow. That place is long gone according to Google maps satellite view.

 

Hi Mr GasHauler
Yeah, I'd say that around 25 to 30 minutes is about normal, if there is no line to wait on. The fastest being Marathon and the slowest being Citgo. Citgo seems to not only want to ask too many question, but they want acknowledgements and verifications that you understood the questions ... "Did you cut your engine regeneration system off? ( YES-NO ) Are you sure you cut your engine regeneration system off? ( YES-NO ) If we catch you with it on you'll be banned from the terminal, do you understand ( YES-NO ) If you can't load here your company will probably fire you ( YES-NO ) If they don't fire you for disobeying our policy, we can ban the whole company from using these facilities ... do you understand ( YES-NO ) Are you SURE you understand? ( YES-NO ) Trailer Number ( ENTER ) Don't lie to us about the number, we can ban you for that too ( Acknowledge YES-NO ) Are you loading ULSD? ( YES-NO ) Was the compartment previously loaded with distillates ( YES-NO ) Customer load number (ENTER). Destination ( STATE ) Branded or Unbrander ( YES-NO) PO Number ( ENTER ) ... Yeah okay ... I'm playing around here a little but you get the general idea. You know there are sometimes even notifications about your company that they feel they have to impart to you while you are loading ... ( Your company insurance is about to run out ... Workmans comp insurance runs out at end of month ... IT'S CRAZY.

Worst nightmare at a rack. About 20 years ago I went to BP to pick up a load ... no problem. Got to the drop site and put it in the ground but according to my stick readings I was missing about 3000 gallons. Double checked everything still missing about 3000 of regular. Ya know you can get fired for that ... losing that much gas and not knowing where it went ... somebody is bound to accuse you of stealing it or selling it to someone. My bills say 9000 gallons and my reading say 6000. I called the president of the company ... woke him up and told him the situation and he said he wanted to see me in the morning, but to go ahead and finish out my shift as we had stores that were almost out of product.
( While I'm driving all this is going through my head and I'm saying to myself that there is only one place this shortage can be coming from and it's got to be the rack ... I may seem a little wacked out from time to time, but I take my job seriously and make every effort to keep all my ducks in a row ) Sooooooooo the next load is coming out of BP also and I pull into the same bay, load, leave the truck in place while I go into the kiosk and pull the paperwork. It is showing 9000 gallons so every compartment ought to just about be topped off. I go back to the bay, climb on top and start opening dome lid covers ( yes, I know that's a big no-no, but I'm desperate at this point ) and the front compartment is only about half loaded ... the back compartment is down about 1/3, and 2,3 and 4 are also low. I close the dome lids, cone off the bay behind my truck, go back to the kiosk and call the terminal manager and explain to him what happened. He asked what the time was on the bill and I told him which was about 7 minutes prior to calling him up. He said to not move the truck and he would be there in about 15 minutes. We eventually got everything straightened out and received credit for the 3000 gallon shortage on the first load and almost 4000 gallon shortage on the second load and instead of getting fired the next day, got a raise for my diligence and saving the company money. Soooooooooooo yeah ... sometimes you can turn a bad situation around ... thank God it was just the terminal pumps going out of calibration ... I could have just seen me trying to explain to the boss man where all that gas went the night before ... NOT.

 

Gashauler, you were spoiled by those three arm racks. Kinder Morgan in Vegas is by far the fastest I ever loaded. Very few racks allow three arms at once.

 

You short a customer, your fired..... The oil company shorts a customer it's a honest mistake.

kinda sums it up....

 

How true ... but here is the other part that I have always wondered about. All those trucks that loaded on that rack between the time I pulled that first load ( and prior ) and the time I got back ( about 3 hours ) for the second load must have been shorted also ... those pumps didn't just go out of calibration for me ... everyone that loaded in that bay during those hours was also shorted ... how many people caught it ... and do you think that the terminal went back through the records to check and give credit for those loads pulled. I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet a dollar to a dime that somebody didn't reconcile their gallons when they dropped and ended up getting fired for the terminals mistake.

 

Yeah I've loaded 5 at one time, doesn't happen too often because you pretty much gotta have the right combination of products and load arms available on that particular load ... like 3 compartments of regular, 1 compartment of premium and one of ULSD and the terminal has to be set up in the right way. BP has started putting the ULSD on a seperate rack from the gas so you have to move the truck between loading gas and distillates ... but yeah ... occasionally I have done 5 at one time but the problem with that is that your VR system on the tank can usually only handle so much fumes being ejected at any one time. If the volume gets to be too much it can open the popit valve in the back of the trailer and expell fumes out the back of your truck while you arfe loading. If you look on the factory tags, on the frame of the tank, where it gives the compartment size in gallons that they will hold ... it also gives you a figure for maximum loading capacity/minute ... exceed that and the excess vapors are ejected out the back ... that's why some terminals have restrictions on how many load arms you can hook up at one time.