Tanker Driver

Heavy's school of tanking anything liquid.

Buy mcdonalds coffee tall large no lid. Fill it.

Put it on your cab floor by your stick.

Start driving. DONT you spill that #### thing. (Use marbles as a alternative) You DO want your coffee break right? be very gentle.

If you don;t spill it, you are tanker ready.

Tanking is a little bit of detail work and whole lot of liquid management. For you for example foolishly stopped short at a light you pile that liquid into the front. It's going to slam back heavier than your whole rig. Feather your brakes and add some clutch for the slam. Then ease forward about a foot or two before the liquid slams back against the front it should settle down.

DO NOT whatever you do ever... ever... horse her into another lane. YOU WILL TURN OVER right there. If someone got in your way take the hit and have your dash cam part of the lawsuit etc.

 

Staying awake, it is monotonous and boring most days.
Did it for years, and still do occasionally, just droning along the hwy at a measly 120k lbs, not oversized or overweight, and on pavement all day no exciting roads, gets very boring.

 

Smoothe and steady...Exit ramps at 1/2 [or less] of the posted exit speed and respect the product, use your PPE as required.

The rest is learning how the valves work, how to make sure the trailer is clean, dry and odor free and closed up before attempting to load...used to pull up to the old Shell lube oil rack and watch the guy who forgot to close his valves as he squgeeied his mess into the recovery drains before pulling back in to load to reinforce that my trainee didn't want to be 'that guy'.... and how to plumb the off loading.

You will go to places where they do everything, where you do everyting...places where the delivery directions include driving down a one way street the wrong way to fill poly tanks sitting on cinder blocks in a garage on a residential street in Brooklyn, driving away afterwards as the tanks shake like big bowls of jello...places where you get told 'don't walk in the puddles'...you get to see it all...

Lane change and exit ramps are critical. When I was with Provost, they rolled a tanker on an overpass on the 401 inTornoto. 1000 liters of resin in a 2000 liter center compartment climbed the wall at 10KPH and flipped the whole rig...somewhere I have the picture from the Sun showing all 16 lanes closed. I knew the driver, saw him a lot in the US, a 25 year [or more] vetran. Liquid can bite aytime!

 

Something else happened if it flipped at 10 kms/hr that is 6 mph. I have hauled a lot of fuel on some terrible roads, and it really isn't hard. Exit ramp posted speeds are already artificially low so no need to slow to half, or be paranoid about it.
You are making it sound way way way harder than it really is.
Learning how to time shifts with the slosh of the liquid is about the only thing that is different. Some people feel a need to make easy jobs sound really hard. I call BS to those making this guy paranoid.
Its like those who say driving the ice roads up north is hard...I've been there and its brain dead simple...easiest driving i have ever done.
Or someone who sees a few episodes of Hwy thru hell and this towing and recovery is so hard...no its tv show, and they even used that ridiculously fat and retarded Adam guy, he is so stupid he can barely tell the difference between a bowl of cereal and a loader tire....so yes everything seemed difficult to him.
I do heavy towing and recovery every winter for the last 20 years, its a little common sense, and just do it...nothing is 1% as hard as many people make it out to be. My drivers start on tankers to learn how to drive before they do difficult things.
A few of you may flame me for being honest, I really don't care...so flame away...time for some honesty in this thread.
Tanker is easy peasy!!!

 

I like to spin wild stories out of imagination for those who are non truckers at my dinner table, so.. how did your trip go?

Really? My trip? (Bad word grumps... stares into dinner plate...)

I stopped doing that, it scared them. Caused them to question my sanity. THAT was not welcome.

 

fuel tankers are usually eliptical, this was a round barrel, smallest compartment half full was the only product , a dense resin from Reichhold. CVOR found no defects....

heavy and dense products move with a lot more force than fuel. Petroleum products are lighter than water, under 8 LBS/gal. sulfuric acid is almost 2x the weight/ gal of water at over 15 lbs/gal and I've hauled Titianium Dioxide slurry [22.5 lb/gal] where a max load was only 2350 gal and felt like a giant bowling ball inside a 5000 gal 'tight fill' former insulated latex tank. Chemicals are another whole side of tanker yanking.

 

I've hauled many liquids and chemicals...it just isn't hard.
What frustrates me is people making something sound so scary and difficult, that really isn't. I hauled glue to a plywood plant, i was young, everyone told me that it was so hard, and to be so extremely careful it was hard to haul bulk glue loads...man oh man that was an easy job. Wasn't even any scary as hell roads to deal with...just going up and down the Coquihala was all. No muddy switchbacks up and down a mountain with 28% grades, every tired chained up and praying i didn't slide over the edge and free fall 3000 feet. Nope on pavement, legal weights and dimensions, winter storms who cares, throw on a few sets of triples and keep driving. OP don't let the over blown horror stories scare you, it is easy easy easy!

 

Heaven is tanker work. The Lord would be pleased to put your broken aged trucking body to work easing around Heavens scenses with a glorious tanker. Plug hose, open valve. Wait for Mr Gurgle to finish. Done.

EASIEST work I ever had. Should have kept it.

 

So lets guess on the high side for the sake of argument, and say that resin weighs 2.5 pounds per liter, although it would actually be less. You said 1000 liters in a hole that could hold 2000 so it was half full, so 2500 pounds of resin. Even if i was in a parking lot and turned the wheel violently to do a hard 360 degree turn at 10 kms/hr, a measly 2500 pounds would not flip any of my trucks over. So that driver either lied to you when he told you the story, or it was a mechanical failure and a couple of axles snapped off or the frame broke or something else catastrophic.