The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

Going old school this week. My trailer is in the shop getting some work done, so I'm using a spare. It's a 1976 Fruehauf, on spring ride without ABS. It's in surprisingly good working order for a spare. But loading lime is quite a chore, without suspension gauges and not on a scale. Makes me wonder how the old timers did it before air ride. Oh and did I mention all the valves are on the right side of the trailer? That adds another degree of fun to it....

 

Good times, the last company I worked for had some old straight trailers that were still spring ride. They really like to bounce around when they are empty.

 

Reckon what their reason for putting all the gauges on the right (wrong) side of the trailer was?

There's not any instance I can think of when that would be a benefit.

 

There is a Franz bakery here in Spokane wa that has their own trailers that are backwards like that and they also have an electric blower on site to unload their trucks. They are backwards because of the way their unloading area is setup. That also makes it a pain for us to get in there as you are right next to the building when unloading. Like 15" away at the most.

 

I own several old fruehaufs that are set up on the off side. It was an option from them and like @Roberts450 said it was company specific usually because of offload sites. I hate them because every time I have to pull one the wind seems to come in from the right side do I freeze my ### off. I also have a couple old trailers that are side delivery trailers but have the piping out of the pods ####ed about 20 degrees towards the rear makes finding T's a royal pain and we end up building our own.

 

Allow me to shed some light on this. The trailer in question was sitting on a mountain in the weeds when we bought it. The previous owners parked it there years ago, and they wanted to use it as a pig. They were a blasting company, and the product was some form of powdery substance. Anyway, they didn't have a blower on site, so they removed all the hot air pipes from it, and plumbed a fitting into the top air line. They used an industrial air compressor to charge the tank, and emptied it with top air only. So basically when we bought it, we started from scratch. We replaced everything out back, axles, springs, air lines and tank, replaced the fifth wheel plate. Everything except the tank and frame. So when we got to the hot air pipes, the main pipe at the front of the trailer was on the right, with no valve to close the aerators off. All of our trailers have a valve to shut the aerators off, which is nice at some places we unload. Our mechanic stood and stared at this for a half a day, trying to figure out how to pipe air over to the left side in order to put a shut off valve in the aeration line, and have it on the left side, along with all the other valves.

Well, he had a list of parts a mile long, and the cost was outrageous. Knowing this was to be a spare, I jokingly asked why we couldn't just turn the unloading valves to the right side, add a shutoff for the aerators on the right, and save time and money. The boss was there and loved the idea. (More money for his swimming pool chemicals!) So that's how it happened.

It actually worked pretty well. Not too shabby for a $10K total investment. It looks a little rough, but works rather well.

 

I love this arctic weather and the frozen scales to go with it...

 

I unload one hopper at a time. Most of our guys will open two at a time and have to babysit it. But anyways, I'll empty the trailer, then build tank pressure up to around 5-7 pounds with the aerators. Then open the product valves and let the pressure go to zero. Repeat for each hopper. This is all done with the line valve closed. Once each hopper is empty, I'll open the line valve to clear it, and open the blowdown to release any pressure in the tank. Takes longer doing it all this way, but I've never had a problem.