The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

Well, things have taken a turn for the worse around here. We pretty much lost one of our larger accounts. The one this company has been servicing for 20+ years, and my favorite customer. All over money. Another company came in and cut the rates. I won't name them but they're part of a very large corporation. They're a starter company around here. People go there to learn the ropes, then switch to a better paying company. And they're service is less than desirable.

We have plenty of other work lined up, but most of it if undesirable, short (30 mile), low paying crap.

I'm going to attempt to stick around as long as possible, with the hope that this customer sees the error of their ways and calls us back. I certainly don't want to switch jobs and start in the basement again, but this may force me to.

 

Thats a bummer dude. Just gotta find the silver lining in there some place.

 

What company is that?

 

I won't say who I work for, company policy prohibits that. We're a small, 15 truck operation, and when busy, we actually have some other carriers help us out. The other outfit that got the contract has like 180 trucks, and the ability to call their parent company and have more within short order.

Our now former customer is starting to realize the error of their ways though. Last week alone they had 5 loads they ordered that never showed up. The guys that run the plant are furious with the one person who made the decision to give us the boot

 

Go figure, good help costs more. They want bargain costs, that's what they get. Hope your company gets it back

 

So last week was a first for me kinda sorta. Im used to transloading out of railcars but this one was clay and we where just moving it from the rail yard up to the landfill to get buried or what ever they do with it. Took 2 of us 3 days to move 5 railcars worth of this junk. One cause we didnt come quite prepared. Im guessing our sales guys didnt do much research on the product before selling the job. They didnt have any dust collection stuff onsite for when where loading. Our westside office dosent do much pneumatics so I showed up Tuesday and kinda had to try and figure things out sense their driver just sat around monday. Anyways got one load in tuesday afternoon and then had our shop send us some equipment we use for doing our flour transloads. Anyways we got it figured out and gotter did. Never really deal with mud going to bakeries so that was new aling with open air unloading so it was a messy week for me but a good week. And who says you cant stock pile with a pneumatic tankers. Lol

 

Last time I hauled clay they used it in fiberglass.

 

I hated clay. At my last job we'd load Dixie Clay in South Carolina, and take it to Carlisle PA. The people at Dixie Clay were awesome to work with, but very, very picky about having a clean trailer. My first trip there was my first solo trip with a tank. I was told before I left that the trailer had already been washed, and was ready to go. So I hook up to it, climb up to close the lids, and glanced inside. Being very new to all this, I seen some coal dirt inside, thought about inquiring about it, but figured who am I to question the wash man. So I took off for South Carolina, happy in my ignorance.

Once I got there, they informed me of the screen test I had to pass before loading. Basically they put a cap on the discharge pipe with a screen in it. Then you build tank pressure to 15 psi, and open each hopper valve. If you have more than a teaspoon of dirt in the screen, you get rejected, and sent for another wash. So I build my pressure up to 15 psi, Charlie says go ahead and open it up. I throw the valve open and promptly blow the screen across the parking lot. Charlie sighs, says "I guess you didn't wash out, did you? Go get washed out and come back". So I go for a wash, come back the next morning. He comes out, looks at me and smiles. "If you don't pass today, don't bother coming back ever again." Well, I passed, and got loaded. We actually became good friends pretty fast, and I still talk to him seven years later. He still loves to bust my chops about our first encounter. The last time I saw him, he gave me an open invitation to come visit him and his family anytime.

But unloading that stuff was downright miserable. And I'm glad I don't do it anymore

 

I've had to stockpile crushed quicklime with a pneumatic just by blowing it out the back of the discharge pipe. That was a miserable day...

 

i hauled regionally in the upper midwest for an outfit that supplied a lot of lime (pebble, crushed, hydrated...) to a number of water treatment plants, some coal plants, and some other industrial sites. some people griped a lot about the pebble for how awful a plug could be (having to take apart the product pipe and all) but i never had any serious problems (that were my fault, anyway). it is my suspicion that one or two of those fellows may have been a touch incompetent or impatient and would rather sit in the cab than watch what was going on with their trailer.

a few times some smart guy would direct me to put product into a full silo, but even then, well let's just say it pays to stand around and stare at your gauges/hose while unloading. a lot of the water plants were quiet, rural places with no one around; requisite equipment included a folding camp chair. made it a lot more comfortable to babysit the offload.

though i didn't have any problems with the loads, i did have a pretty great start. first week out on my own, was on my first or second load from a regular loading spot at a port, i pulled under the loading silo and didn't notice that the loader hadn't pulled up this little catwalk (i should've noticed it, and he probably shouldn't have left it down). well it was high enough that the cab cleared it, however the tall shiny stack of the big pete i was driving did not. pulled into the yard later that week with my cool aerodynamic bent back stack and got a good 45 minute earful from the owner... yup, been a trucker for long enough to accumulate closer to a million miles than not at that point, felt pretty dumb... why they spec'd a truck with those tall stacks for that sort of work i don't understand (hey it looked cool, i guess).

so there's my input for anyone reading this looking to go to pneumatics or anything else involving these sort of delightful random low-clearance situations; don't forget to look up in those industrial places, and patience is a pretty good virtue when unloading. oh, and pay attention. that's an important one.

only did that for about 8 months; had a nice rig (truck, anyway; trailer i think was old enough to have voted for the first president bush, but they kept it up for the most part), people were nice, but pay wasn't quite what i would've liked and ultimately i needed some time at home away from driving. i've had that now, the bills are too much, so i'm heading back to driving next month, but taking a stab at liquid bulk this go around... the dust/mud at a lot of these places with the dry bulk i was doing did tend to suck. fly ash and hydrated lime; two good reasons to have really short hair.