start food grade tanker mon.

Find a commodity you enjoy moving or hauling and the money will follow. Have hauled nothing but tanks. Chemical, petroleum, and food grade. Gotta say I enjoy the food grade above all but there can be better money on the chemical side as well as more responsibility.

 

There were any where from 8-15 company drivers and a dozen or so owner ops. The number was constantly going up and down. Guys would get hired and after a few months decide tanking wasn't for them.

It was July of 86 I think when Coastal went down. I went to work there shortly after it became Nuco. I had been running solo for CRST. The owner's son was working there then. Howie, as we called him, was probably the best dispatcher I had in 30 years of trucking. If you wanted to run he would get you out in the reload system and let you run untill you were ready to come home. If he had to screw you he would tell you right up front about it and tell you why.

I heard the old man passed away a year or so ago.

 

i remember the first time i saw a chemical leaman pulling a coastal trailer, it was a bit shocking at the time. from what has been told to me, chemical leaman was doing well financially up until around 1979-80. at that time in bridgeport,nj they had a major layoff; went from about 140 drivers down to around 70-80. deregulation seriously impacted chemical, coastal, matlack etc; those carriers could no longer
command high enough rates to remain profitable. i guess my point is that it was a long slow decline.

 

When Chemical Leaman aquired Coastal in 1986 it definetly put a strain on their finances. By the early 90's when one Mr R David Hamilton managed to become the majority stockholder it really went downhill. He was the guy that put Snuffy Smith{green Macks, union outfit} out of business when he got control there. The CEO was a guy from Pa that wanted to keep everything running right but Mr. Hamilton was chairman of the board and could do what he wanted. Most of the older equipment got sold to brokers that sent it to Mexico. We were told that if we wanted to keep working we should plan on buying a truck. The dispatcher and terminal manager quit and were replaced by people that did as they were told, and that was starve the company drivers out. All the good freight went to the owner operators and I became a 3-4 day a week local driver. Big hit in the pay check. In late 94 it was time for me to move on. Sometime after that they were merged someway into Quality.

 

http://www.qualitydistribution.com/about/our_mission/history.aspx
Shares are currently running around $12.50 . How to make $1 million in trucking - start with $2 million.
My affiliate owner was leased to Montgomery before QC was formed .

 

Just before I left there was talk of starting a plastics only operation and naming it Trans Plastics. I didn't know if they ever followed through or not. One of the drivers that worked out of Columbus went to work for Montgomery about a year bfore I left. don't know whatever happened to him.

 

i recall seeing "transplastics" on the nj turnpike probably around 2001,
pretty sure it was one of those ex-cltl "vac" drybulkers. when i left bridgeport terminal in 1990 there were still 90 drivers on the list.
there is only a handful that are still there. most quit or retired after
they saw what the conditions (lower pay,benefits etc.) were gonna be like with QC. i know some are hauling fuel now. also a few became O/O.

 

I remember seeing coastal trucks around Marietta Oh many moons ago...Ford Bros....that takes me back I worked at the Marietta terminal when I was in high school...washing trucks and trailers pm work and changing tires..green r models with air starters( then we painted them white with yellow,purple and orange stripes)...I worked there when Fords sold to Mississippi Chemical Express out of Bossier City...after high school I worked in shop and loaded gas and asphault for a while......I used to have to go to coal grove to get used parts from the field full of million mile macks....I got in Fords at the end but it appeared that back in the day they had quite the operation I think they had only 3 terminals I had been to one in cinci , coal grove and marietta...you know much about their history?

 

I don't know very much about Ford. The guy that was my terminal mgr in Columbus was the Coastal terminal mgr at Sistersville WVa before Coastal went broke. He talked about Ford some and I think he said they had a terminal in Charleston and a small one in Columbus, and they they had a big problem with hazmat contamination in the ground around Coal Grove that made them decide to get out of Dodge before the EPA came after them. Wish I knew more.

 

i am sure i saw a few pics of Ford Tank lines on hankstruckpictures.
green tractor and a spred axle insulated trailer. but i cant seem to find it now.

i believe many of these old terminals are contaminated; and probably moreso if there was an old tankwash located there.