How hard is tanker ?

I've been through Baton Rouge and I remember the traffic was horrible just trying to get through town on the interstate. Newark yes, Houston yes, Lake charles no.

 

I haul aviation. Would not do any other fuel hauling.

 

If you're eastbound on I-10 make sure you're in the center lane before you reach the top of the bridge, because right at the bottom of the bridge the road curves to the right and the right lane becomes exit-only (and it does not look like the part of town that would be easy to get a rig through and get back on the interstate). Whoever the engineer was that designed that oughta be flogged in the public square.

 

He lost me at steady weekends!

 

Some switching but I mostly just run nights like 90+% of the time....Sometimes I have a day appointment but we are allowed to do split sleeper berth so if I have an early appointment I just go back to sleep and back to nights....I've stuck on the same shift running nights for months on end doing food grade tanker....Some of it probably depends on your company's customers and dispatchers...For the most part I think my dispatchers know I run nights so they try and give me appointments favorable to my driving...Reefer is way harder imo...I tried it for a couple of months but went right back to tanker...I have no desire to go anywhere else.

 

yes some even have driver lounges and free laundry...The Quala tank wash in Cedar Rapids even has a pool table and a kitchen for the drivers to cook in

 

yes...quite a few customers for food grade tankers will let us stay overnight

 

That’s how I would go to get to our terminal in St Gabriel, go right by the LSU campus.

 

I've personally been to shippers/customers with a tanker and been treated like royalty and treated horribly when I pulled a container. I've had shipping clerks treat a driver like trash right in front of me when he asked why he was there for 4 hours and then turn around and be the kindest person possibly when I told them I had a tanker delivery. We have our share of A-Hole shipping clerks, but it seems to be very few and far between. i's say 90+ % of our customers allow the driver to sleep on property overnight and most of the guys I know or who work for me, will stay at a tank wash as an alternative. Tank drivers get paid better overall and if at a shipper or receiver over 2 hours, you're on the clock. (I once spend 5 days on detention waiting for the customer to have room in teh tank to offload. Nothing like getting paid to watch Netflix.) If it was between reefer and tanks, tanks hands down. Otherwise I would leave the business, I won't ever haul a refer again.