The Fuel Hauler Thread

If the sight glass is full, tap on the tank to see if it's just leftover residue, if so, use the returns drain line.

 

+1 on the sight glass. My go to was the suspension air gauge, listening and feeling the trailer. You'll know.

Company had manifold valves to cross into each compartment. So let's say I could dump a 3400 and a 2200 compartment next to each other off the same line. On a pre trip I found all 5 of em cracked open ever so slightly. Had I loaded like that a whole 12k load could've been crossed up. Scumb@g move.

 

What do you use for getting smaller diesel/ grime stains out of your clothes?

 

Ether (starting fluid)

 

Tide. Or shout spray

 

The garbage can
You’ll never completely wash diesel or gas out of the fabric and you certainly don’t want those benzines rubbing against your body

 

I don't know if you guys have had to deal with this but apparently there is a new industry best practice that most of the racks in SoCal are adhering to. Basically to reduce the risk of static discharge and product splashing around in your compartment, you will get low flow until the inlet in your compartment is fully submerged in product. This is between 200-400 gallons and it takes forever. Doubles the time it takes to load a truck. Shell put out a safety bulletin because apparently guys are getting frustrated, and are setting an arm for like 8000 gallons, and then just stopping the meter, moving the arm to another compartment, and restarting to avoid the low flow.

In related news, a guy blew up his trailer at GATX. We had 2 trucks in there at the time. You can see one of them (red and silver), the other one you can't see, is directly to the right of the truck that blew up. Melted all the air/electrical on the trailer but no major structural damage.



The interesting thing about GATX is that the meter is at the front of the rack, by the cab of the truck. I always thought that was annoying because it's a lot more walking, but I never thought about the safety of it. That's probably why our driver walked away unhurt. He was standing by the passenger door of his cab, next to the meter, and didn't get hit by the blast that came into his lane. At any other rack, if you are loading a semi, or loading next to a semi, you are staring right at the side of a tank.

 

More surprising is that they are still top loading with a spout...not bottom loading their fuel trucks. Fuel trucks here now have a seperate manifold per hole, and they bottom load trucks. No more standing on top of the tank in a winter blizzard freezing.