Questions about what it's like to drive a tank

Nice! if you looking to make good money though and like OTR I would give Trimac a call I think they have trucks in your area they make really good money and if you have a good driving record you could in 12-24 months get into the Elite Division. My goal is to get my own truck and drive for them. But good luck on your journey

 

My wife is 5'2" and a buck 25 wet. She pulls tanks with me in the summer, when the kids are out of school. She can get into the hangars and walk the catwalks much better than me; and run the PTO with no errors. Good luck, girl. Ignore the discriminatory slanderous BS!

 

Though I've never had to wear any of the suits, pretty sure all the sweating helps keep the water weight down. Your size has nothing to do with it if your determined it's what you want to do, hell I weighed 140 when I started,pushing 180 now lol.

 

The words to this apply. . . "you want it, you got it."
ps: the Peterbilt in this video BELONGS TO that woman. Cool trivia~!!!
pss: Check out what truckers are doing in LA, with all the flooding. . . look @
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...s/home-time-ruined.321684/page-5#post-5399395
FEMALE truckers have hearts bigger than us fatboys at times. LoL. Good luck, girl. My wife told me to post you that vid, because she's savvy with the trivia about the trucks!!!

 

Have you tried bulk tanker outfits? I love bulk. Prefer it over liquid.

 

First off. It is a victory for you to be Female and doing what you want to do in life which happens to be trucking. I salute you. Now that I got that out of my system, my first job with bulk tanking cement was a female trainer with Hahn Transport out of New Market Maryland. I was 21 in those days such a newbie pup with a Class A back in the 80's I knew nothing. I knew just enough to pass the Maryland State Driving Test with one mistake deducting two points for having the international '72 transtar cabover in reverse which is opposite the first gear and above the lower granny gear. That one shook me when the instructor started scratching on his clipboard. Thinking 4 months school and my tavern work to back that up far from home in Baltimore would go POOF.

The Female trainer had me in a 379 Pete built in approximately '85 with a 425 CAT which at the time was a wonderful truck. I would buy one of those if I had the money, I never will so I don't worry about it. Not for a show truck but actually not for hire and use the sleeper on longer trips so.. probably on a private A RV Cdl, Im not sure how that works out. I remember being told i can run a bobtail with a Car license, but you will have to prove that to me.

anyhow...

That was my first start in the tanker work. The 379 was a very honest truck (Peterbuilt) manual everything I think 13 speed double under. Not quite sure will have to look it up. It's been so long. ANYWAY... hauling Cement in bulk meant that you were top heavy in a Heil Tanker not so much in a Butler. And I think there was a Fuehauf Tanker as well. The Fuehaufs, the new ones with the aluminum wheels in the back to be able to haul a few more hundred pounds of cement product was not for looks, (It looked nice..) but it's there so it's light on the gross weight, tare weight you could load more. I think it was 78600 gross legally based on obselete Axle laws for the 45 foot tanker plus a 20ish foot daycab 379 Pete. It only takes about 45 minutes to a hour 15 minutes to blow off the product into a silo when driven by a 440 Volt industrial electric motor that has 200 horse power packing a turbo blower on it, the whole thing was as big as a three man living room sofa and has a hum to it you won't forget any time soon. Flip the switch after hooking hoses closing the main drain valve and wait 10 minutes to build 14 pounds on the tank then open the rear most product pot of which there are three in that tanker. Stand on your hose as it behaves like a big snake writhing and jerking on the ground between your tanker and the silo intake pipe which is like a 6 inch monster going up oh... 150 feet straight up to feed one of several silos in a place like Lehigh Cement at the Baltimore Harbor which.. is across from Fort McHenry. Bang on the pot after about 20 minutes or so Thumpk nope not yet empty. Bang a little higher on the tank with rubber mallet BOOM BOMM BOMM yep it's mvoing out of the pot. Make sure that hose continues to move. Stand on it with your feet and you should feel the product moving from one foot to the next towards the silo with the air mixing and pushing it. SHould it develop a leak it will do it at the valve connection to your tanker. 5 gallon bucket of water, pour on that connection and wait a moment Presto concrete leak sealed. But do it a little bit at a time. No hurry.

Open the middle pot verify 14 pounds on the tank. And verify that the line feed pressure pushing the product is equal to that. Close the rear pot for now. Make sure that hose continues to move. 20 minutes later that pot should be approaching empty. Hammer out a song on that center pot. Boom bomm bomm gets you a closed pot, take a blow on the hose to make sure it's up there into the silo nicely. No product is stuck. (This is important for what's coming next. Open up the third and last pot you have been opening and draining the three pots from the rear of the trailer working center then the forward pot near your 5th wheel. Let's say that your hose line quit moving and writhing. You close the pots all of them, then open your line air to the max and get the hammer and start banging on the silo pipe on the building. BAMBAM BAM BAM. you should hear a sort of snort, choke and a clearing of a giant metal throat as the air gets moving again pushing what little product left in the hose which is a a very good sign. When you stand on the hose with both feet feeling a hisss as the air flows like a water with nothing getting it stuck, reopen your first pot and continue to blow while making sure your tank pressure is around 14 pounds. By this time a seagull or two may be on your mirrior eyeing the doughnut by your coffee on the dash of the mack, with both windows open for the cool morning sea air with the damp fog, those birds are seeking something maybe a few sips of the coffee which is steaming quietly and a few pecks at the doughnut. (You have to throw that one away, you don't know which sort of infections you could get from the parasites that hide under the feathers of the bird.) Those can grow into worms that require surgery and a week or two of antibiotics IV. Which will kill them and you have to eliminate them.

Anyhow.

Now for the music. You solved the three pots, they are have a little bit left in each one of them youre going to open the rear pot first and beat on it. Now there is a second air line to that pot in the bottom to viberate it BUSSSZZZZZZZZZ shake it down. Leave that pot open. Open the second center pot blow that one down and you might use the viberator one time to make sure it's empty. Now there is a new noise coming in. It will literally begin to sing for you. That whole tanker. It will be soft at first and then get really loud and melodious as you empty the third and last pot. Beat on all three pots as the singing reaches it's max. Open the product air pressure to the max and you will begin to see the tanker pressure fall from 14 pounds to 13 your hose is really working on the ground as the last few hundred pounds go up the silo. Beat on the pipe now it should be a CLANG!!! all the way up there. This time your tanker is singing in full song and crying at everyone in earshot. This is important you are now beginning to literally drain the air from all other tankers unloading around you. Lehigh Cement Building had 4 pumps big as a VW up there in the pump house and when you are 15 tankers blowing into it cement off those 4 pumps Huge amounts of air. Huge. Shut off your pots final blow all the way down to 8 pounds then shut off the product unloading line to protect the other tankers. who by now are probably spending a few minutes to blow pure air up their silo pipes just so to build their tankers back to 15 pounds for some of those veterans who know what they can do at 15. Unload in 40 minutes flat but god help you if you stuff too much product and get it stuck. More on that in a moment. Newer drivers will run like I did 12 to 14 to be very conservative because when it gets stuck, in a few moments both the line and tank pressures will rise, slap the product pot closed open the line blow to the max and beat on the silo pipe until it sings for you at each hammer blow. (Rubber mallet...)

All done with the tanker. Bring it down to zero with the emergency discharge blow down. MAKE SURE NO SOUL is anywhere NEAR that pipe, which is on the right hand side pointing at the Baltimore Curtis bay harbor waters and right above your right hand drive tandems. Open that up and you will have a ROAR once heard no one will forget this noise. It's worth your life and everyone and anyone near you to make sure they are not in the path of that, it will cut a man in half. when both gauges say zero zero pressure, go ahead and leave that discharge pipe open (More on that in a minute) go inside and get your bills signed for a delivery made. You worked between 50 minutes to 1.20 hours for approximately 76 dollars in tanker pay from Lime Kiln Maryland or Union Bridge Maryland Lehigh to Baltimore Camden district across from Fort McHenry to deliver this cement powder for export on the ship or barge.

You will return to either Union Bridge or Lime Kiln Maryland to get reloaded. That will take about a hour a change. Union Bridge is considered a mountain run because you have two ridges you need to run to get to the quarry there And Lime Kiln is off I70 south of Frederick and literally just the few houses and a cement shipping place (Along with Mortar etc). Both of these places take in Portland Cement by railroad. Get loaded. It's not even 7 AM and you have been working since 4 AM. Go back to Lehigh in Baltimore harbor and unload another 76 dollars in gross pay. Return to either one of these two places to load again and again. By the time your 4 oclock rolls around you would have delivered 5 or 6 loads of cement over a full 10 hour driving time plus a 4 hours worth of onduty time blowing this stuff. Usually a bit less than 10 hours driving actual and a bit more than 4 hours on the paper logs. We crunch that down to 30 minutes unloading then off duty for a hour to get lunch or something. You also bought breakfast, off duty for a hour and same with dinner later that day on the road. nom nom nom, foood. (Is usually a coffee, cigerette or two backed by junk food depending on what 5 to 10 dollars bought you for the day. If you delivered 6 loads into Baltimore Lehigh Harbor for today that is ... 6 loads times 76 dollars in the mid to late 80's money comes out to 456 dollars gross. Take away 39% tax bracket for uncle sam... $177.80 in withholding for today, state was 6% so that's 27.36 and then there is the social security withholding which is like 4% I think it was... 18.74 local tax would be 2% 9.12 Insurance benefit medical blue cross and shield for individual was 62.5 a week (750 for the gold premium medical plan which caps you at 1 million dollars life time benefit... .. 1 million aint much when Baltimore Crowley SHOCK Trauma center was about 100,000 dollars each week when they throw the works at you including maggots to drain the blood from under your skin in the head injury, hyperbaric chamber to get your blood oxygen saturation back up above 95% by flooding you with pure oxygen and then adding pressure very similar to about 50 feet under water to force that oxygen into your body through the skin with brute force. And when you are sufficiently pressurized and your oxygen is stable (There is a full OR crew inside with you so that if something happens they will operate on you right then and there inside that tube. for anything that comes up including a cracking of chest, breaking sternum in half and reaching in with a hand to massage your heart and manually flow the blood through your vessals by hand squeezing your heart.) it takes about half a day to get to 50 feet in the chamber and about that long if not twice that long to get back to sea level which for Baltimore at that location was around 60 feet. ANyway that's a million dollars insurance gone in two and half months life time saving.

So your 456 dollar day's pay comes down to 223.70 for today not including the deduction for the health insurance... call that 62.50 per week. solid 5 day work week (Sometimes 6 if you are really lucky... we fight so hard for 6 days sometimes when Dispatcher calls) so minus 12.50 from 223.70 works out to $211.20 net pay.

Because of Maryland's Excessive tax rate after standard deduction I usually filed a form to payroll to withhold 75 dollars weekly and 100 dollars for uncle sam each week. call that 35 dollars for the day's payroll to be deducted (5 days in a payroll week...) $176 dollars was the final tanker pay for the day. You usually had a loaded tanker late in the afternoon ready to get started after 3 am to roll to your first silo somewhere within 250 miles radius by the sunrise It's very structured in your tanker work for cement, ready mix plants in 5 states depend on you to have that cement being delivered like 5 am, 6 am at the latest, they are already feeding rock and sand and filling concrete mixers to ship to crews up to 1 hours drive around that plant who are standing on the concrete paving tools impatiently waiting on you and your tanker. Weather is irrevelant, you WILL be going. Ice storm? Not a excuse. YOU go. 3 feet of snow? Suck it up princess get going. (Remember Im talking to either a man or a woman driver treating both equally so there is nothing sexist going on here... hang in there...) NOW... what will happen is that the ready mix plant will call your dispatcher early, like really early or the previous night when there is a storm coming in. And inform you to stay home today due to the storms like a N'oreaster or a hurricane or a ice storm epic rains with flooding etc. It does happen. Which is why you set aside two days pay every week you are paid for this company to build savings against storm days in which no one is moving. You are essentially living on 3 day's wages for the work week.

A full 5 day work week using the Lehigh Cement Delivery location as your pay rate per load, that comes out to.... $881.00 flat for 5 days work, INCLUDING the DEDUCTIONS I laid out for you and everyone reading this post. Using the savings stragety you would be setting aside two days worth of net pay at 176 dollars per day that comes out to $529.00 Net and your savings account will contain $352.00 this week. Next week your savings account should hold 754.00 the third week it should contain $1056 dollars. The 4th and final payroll month savings will stand at $1408.00 flat. Your monthly wages will be $2116 dollars net plus the 1408 you set aside for a total net of about $3524 for the whole month net pay after deductions. (Remember you have been deducing 175 additionally each pay, 100 for uncle sam and 75 for maryland against your annual income taxes that will have you at $700 dollars ready to go against your taxes for the year. At this rate your Net income for the year will be around $42,288 dollars NET. with $16896 dollars in your cash savings account seperate from everything each of the 12 months accumulated.

At tax time your standard deductions stood at 7500 dollars. If you could prove (And did...) that you were more than 105 miles from your house for the day's work... (Line Kiln, Frederick Md (House) and Union Bridge Maryland to Lehigh Cement at Baltimore Harbor is NOT 105 miles so you could not claim the 45 dollars per day perdiem that is allowed to you to pay food expenses for the year in the 80's And you were in a daycab so you did not stay away 24 hours full service day more than 105 miles from house. Your Gross income for the year probably is roughly ...

Gross pay based on 5 loads 456 dollars per day.... times 5 days = $2280 weekly gross (Net is down to 881.00) Gross for the month comes out to... $9120.00 times 12 months that's 109,440 at a $456 per day times 52 payroll weeks a year...(260 total working days excluding sunday and saturday...) gross 118,560

Anyhow... 110,000 gross, 16500 in your savings account and uncle sam should show 5200 in money ready for you against uncle sam's taxes after 7500 standard deduction and there should be also 3900 in State Treasury in your name per extra witholding forms against the State taxes which is the second form you will file. I don't know what or which state you are in but am using Maryland's situation as a example to show to you and everyone else.

Theoratically the 1040EZ form is Taxable maximum of 100,000 one page to fill out and sign. But since your gross is somewhere between 110,000 to 119000 (My calculator was arguing with me with numbers that high over 52 weeks... whew... what a year... you will use the 1040 form.

https://www.irs.gov/uac/choose-the-simplest-tax-form-for-your-situation

What is left from your Federal Standard deduction minus the 5200 dollars in federal withholding you paid. will come back to you on your Federal Refund.

What is left from your State of Maryland, whatever it's standard deduction is combined with the 3900 you withheld using the additional witholding form should be returned to you in the form of a refund.

Both of these together will come up with a number from .01 cents all the way to around $9100 max potential refund if your standard deductions wiped out the taxes for the year. Remember there is also additional monies from your Weekly Pay roll deducted as normal for a employee for Federal, State, County Local (City...) then social security, then medicaid and finally whatever additional withholding you specified to payroll under a standard dependant of zero form to maximize your withholding against the taxes coming down the road against you for the year. Im going to sit and think that you should figure 39% for Uncle Sam deduction and 6% for the state deduction plus the 2 to 5% for the small stuff. whatever that comes out to. In any case you will have a large amount of money to throw against your taxes. Around 40,000 for Federal roughly, coffee stain swag (Scientific wild ### guess) and approximately 6600 for the State of Maryland in addition to your standard deduction for both Fed, State tax forms for the year in addition to the additional federal and state withholding you have been doing all 52 weeks of the year at 100 for uncle sam and 75 for the state withheld. In any case, you stand possibly to make a refund in 1980's money. If not? You will break even and not stress about a huge tax bill because there is still around 16,700 inside your savings account untouched all year and growing every week. In 1980's money Silver stood at 2.50 an ounce and Gold at approx 175 dollars an ounce. So you bought a monster box of silver (500 ounces direct from US Treasury in a sealed green container for you to store in your safe... $1250 dollars plus 100 shipping registered US Mail. Every 6 years you bought one Monster Package of Gold at $87500 based on 15000 from your savings for the gold and one box of silver at 1250. per year. That's right about your 16700 in savings from your paper money, bank savings account to a hard asset you store in your safe. This is again in 1980's money should you have bought it then it's going to stand at 1350 per ounce of Gold and right around 22.50 in silver per ounce. You would have done very well over 500 ounces in each of the silver boxes and each of the one gold box you bought every 6 years. This way over 30 years you would have defeated the stock gambling markets and the metal asset is all yours.

Ive said enough for the post for a monster 1980's running tanker Cement.

For a 21 year old me back then it was so much money I needed a plan to keep from going crazy. That was one of them that worked out for me.

Good luck!

 

Jesus Great info!!!