kill me why don't you

Safety Dept EMAIL [email protected]

 

Diesel fuel isn't nearly as volatile as gasoline. You could (although I wouldn't necessarily suggest the practice) light a match, open your fuel tank, and drop the lit match into the tank...and if it doesn't submerge and go out, it will just float there in the fuel and continue burning (like a candle wick) until it runs out of fuel or oxygen, at which point it'll go out...no massive explosion, no real excitement of any kind.

We used to have "smudge pots" at scout camp to light the path out from the campfire bowl...basically tin juice cans filled with diesel, and a roll of TP for a wick. It'd burn until it ran out of fuel and the paper burned up, or until you covered it to suffocate the fire. Not much different than a tiki torch around the patio in the back yard...same concept.

 

Hi Pedigeed, while I agree with you on the fuel island deal, although the deal of the smoking brakes could be another issue altogether, I knew a guy that was leased to the same company as me, and his face had a bunch of scars. We asked him how his face got that way, he said, several years before, while his truck was running, I'd imagine returning a lot of fuel back to the tank creating a lot of vapors, he, without thinking, took his fuel cap off and lit his lighter to see the fuel level, and the vapors flashed in his face. I think a match will go out if you drop it in a container of fuel oil, but the vapors are indeed combustible.

 

Most Everyone is under the belief that the liquid is flammable. And it is in small quantities... Even dropping a lighted match into a gas tank shouldn't make it explode. Dropping it into a tank of anything would be like dropping it into water.

Its as pedigreed said, it's the fumes that are volatile.

Either way... What the hell is that driver doing wrong that his brakes are smoking so bad he's got to stop and pour water on them? Sure there's some times it may happen, but even if it's not a safety issue (and I feel it is.) it's a courtesy to the other drivers to not do that. ...for many reasons. Far as I'm concerned, smoking his brakes alone gives him little room to talk about drivers with less than 10 years experience.

After all, what does he want us to do to get the experience so we can smoke our brakes in a fuel island?

 

Well what I underlined.

Seems to me that if he thinks anyone with under 10 years is a hazard or dufus, he at his 40 years should have known how to drive around such dufuses.

Burning up the brakes, so hot to nearly be on fire, suggests to me his is the bigger dufus, and needs to either retire, or go back to school.

You say in your posting he was pulling doubles?

So have I over the years, and how come I could avoid any dufus on the road, and he Mr. Big Union Guy cannot?

I nary want to believe his story about under 10 years experience, in lieu of him not knowing how to handle a set of doubles.

 

https://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_234655.html

Warm fuel (engine running returning heated fuel back to the tanks) is going to have a greater likelihood of vapors being present...especially on a hot summer's day...but on a frigid day in the middle of winter, and a truck that hasn't been running, probably not much danger involved. And the in-ground tanks which are SUPPOSED to keep the fuel around 60 degrees? The presence of vapors at the surface, especially on a cold winters day up where the air/wind will dissipate them IF they are there, the danger posed to anyone in the area is so small it really isn't enough to get your panties in a bunch about. While there may have been more sensible places to park the truck, it wasn't anything to be concerned with.

 

smoking brakes, any number of reasons, that we do not know.

will those hot brakes blow the fuel island up and kill you, NO. only in hollywood movies, in real life, the truck burns, that is all.

 

That's right, and unless Sly Stallone, Vin Diesel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Steven Segal is starring, that crap ain't gonna happen

 

Many things besides riding them could cause brakes to smoke. Perhaps a return spring broke, causing the brake to drag, excessively heating the drums? Perhaps a wheel seal let go, causing the bearings to starve for oil, heating up the hub to cause the oil-soaked brakes to smoke? Perhaps the brake shoes were thinning, or the drum was worn a little too much, or a combination of the two and the brake started to cam over when the slack auto-adjusted...which I've seen cause the brake shoe to be wedged against the drum until you "convince" the cam to finish camming over. Heck, if the shop has neglected the maintenance, no telling WHAT other causes beyond the driver's control could have caused a brake to start smoking, and I'd bet dollars to donuts the number of drivers who would (or could) spot these issues during their pretrip is EXTREMELY small...probably less than 1/100 of 1% of the drivers on the road, either because the rest don't do a full pretrip or don't know what they'd be looking for to spot these issues.

So unless you know WHY his brakes were smoking, don't assume with your 0-1 year of experience that the driver was the sole reason for the smoking brakes. He might have been, sure...but plenty of other things are likely to have happened as well.