The Fuel Hauler Thread

When you hear that tea kettle whistle, your internals have closed. Make sure you don't have a spoon valve leaking air ,these are found on top of the loading headers. You'd also have these valves where the vapor recovery hose plugs into , sometimes if it's not on completely straight, the spoon valve will leak air.

Also, this just happened to me last week. On my truck, I usually kill the trailer brakes to cut off air supply. I was in a different truck for one day this week, and cutting off air to the trailer , for some reason caused the trailer to lose pressure quickly. I showed 120 psi on my gauges but having that red knob pulled out and having no air supplied to the trailer caused my internals to close up.

So make sure your spoon valves are not leaking at all. If you have to, put a quarter between the loading arm's connect point and the spoon valve. You have to have an air leak of some sort somewhere, and if it only happens while you load, I think this is because your loading arm (or vapor arm) is somehow not on 100 percent even ,and that would mean the arm is "pulling" down, causing an air leak. It's a pain, it's happened to me, and believe me I was sweating bullets man.

 

On second thought, yeah you really do need to let your shop know about it. It's completely illegal to vent that amount of vapor to the atmosphere and is alarming and a safety concern. I'd tell your boss about it, its the right thing to do

 

You need to get it fix right away. That's one of the huge safety devices we have. You either want the tank to be product rich or vapor rich. No half way because that will cause a mixture that is needed to burn.

 

Just thought I would say hello. I haul fuel up here in Northern BC Canada.

 

Was a guy next to me the other day at the loading rack loading his trailer without the vapor recovery hooked up and boy did it smell. Politely suggested after walking over there that maybe it might be a good idea to hook it up. A bit embarrassed the guy took the cap off and was just about blown over when he tried to hook it up.

 

Make sure it's not diesel because diesel does not require one. Believe it or there are some places that do not use vapor recovery way out it the boonies. The right way to approach him is to ask him if vapor is required because like I said there might be a few. Learn not to burn bridges and stay friendly.

 

Was as friendly as could be and could tell by the arm it was gas. Pretty sure that would get you locked out for a couple days if the right person stumbled upon it. I got locked out for 3 days for forgetting to put my hard hat back on after switching bays, leaking arm, in the middle of the night