Liability for mistakes

I have worked for several different gas haulers through the years.

None of these places made drivers pay for a cross drop.

Most of them either wrote up, suspended, or fired the driver involved, depending upon the severity of the cross drop, and whether they want to keep the driver in question on the payroll.

Doesn't mean having to pay back the company doesn't happen. Especially if you signed something saying you would bear the cost of remediation. Good luck.

 

Real truckers never make a mistake!

 

Exactly right. A lot of companies take into consideration the driver's attitude toward what happened and if he's being honest about the cause.
I always figured that a driver who makes a cross drop probably won't do it again for a long, long time.

 

Not as far as I know has any driver had to pay for a his or her screw up. That was back in the 90's, maybe now???

 

That's the risk you take when you have employees.

 

Where I work a cross drop is a week off without pay, then a week in a truck with another driver at trainee pay. Unless you didn't report it. An unreported cross drop is fired on the spot. Stay where you are, we'll come get the truck.

 

The worst...as in most expensive...cross drop I've seen happened to one of our competitors.
The driver had 8000 gallons of Jet-A and dropped most of it into an underground 30 thousand gallon 80/87 Av Gas tank. The AvGas tank was labled and color coded, the unload manifold was labled and color coded, and there was a printed diagram of the tank layout posted at the cite. It was supposed to be idiot proof but it wasn't.
The driver never realized what he'd done...or claimed he didn't. He claimed he didn't notice that there was product coming out of the vent pipe on the now over-filled gas tank. He also claimed that the three thousand gallons of JetA still on his truck must have been due to a math error. He was later fired. His boss probably felt like shooting him.
An alert airport employee was loading a refueling truck and noticed that the product didn't smell right. They tested all the tanks and found the bad one. Luckily, no aircraft had been fueled with the bad gas.
I don't know how much that whole deal wound up costing but it must have been a fortune. We got in on hauling the contam back to the refinery and bringing clean product back. We also wound up getting the haul for that particular airport.
The driver that caused all the mess applied for a job with us. We didn't hire him.

 

No big deal. Back in 1990's Texaco was loading at their loading rack and a driver reported that the gasoline had something in it. The technician reported it up the line and Texaco sent out their lab tech. Everything passed Texaco's inspection and the drivers were told to load. After awhile the driver again reported bad gasoline and again was told to never mind. This went on for a couple of days. By this time just about every Texaco gasoline station got a load from this batch. This batch contain enough water to float a battleship. It was ethanol season and Texaco didn't bother to check their main gasoline above ground storage tank for water. The conclusion, after all that time, was the storage tank roof had leaked and water got mixed with the gasoline. Texaco had to pump all their stations dry, steam clean their underground piping, get it certified that the tank was cleaned and then they can cover it and go on. It must of cost Texaco millions to do all that. I remember going to work and seeing a Texaco station all boarded up for maybe a week or two then on to the next one. The driver that reported all that mess was told to go back to work. Should of listened to that driver.

 

I was with texaco about that time period. We had a station there. I was a old fashioned go for pumping full service gas to the people all day cash etc. (Lots of it too, something round 10K a shift)

One day they said they were closing up to get some work done and that was that. No issues, I used to job to raise a thousand something to get back into OTR work when the time was right. That did not take too long.

However I had two older cars with the original numbers matching engines etc that run leaded and in those days there was a station out of the way that was capable of selling leaded, aviation, racing fuels and several other really special grades. And once in a while I would run a tank of old fashioned leaded through those cars. They would eat it up and get up and run. (Fuel filter changing I think was 20 bucks after) but the costs associated with those fuels compared to the basic Amaco Gold 93 octane or whatever at a buck and 20 or so was quite expensive. 3 to 5 dollars range. Not for on road use. (Something that did not get caught by Maryland in those days because the vehicle was old enough to be historic in registration and thus exempt from emissions. But not exempt from inspections.

Im not sure how far back ethanol goes but to me it's too close to water. I understand we use quite a bit now by percentage in today's cars and the engines don't mind it too much I would think.

In Arkansas it's pretty wide open. We are not a emissions state, we do not recover vapor in fueling and we do not inspect vehicles however if we have a accident and we are found to be neglectful of maintaince then the hammer comes down at that point. It's pretty wide open here.

Maybe not for too much longer, there is talk in the state house that they might begin to impose a variety of things for cars and so on. You already cannot really get the old Desiel, everything deisel now is post 2007 low sulphur.