The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

In 2001, I started pulling pneumatics that were made while LBJ was President. Companies tend to keep those expensive things around awhile.

And a folding lawn chair is mandatory for just any kind of tanker yanking, especially pneumatics, fuel haulers, crude gatherers, and LPG haulers.

 

I learned early on that the faster I try to unload, the more behinder I seem to get.

Lately I've been doing one load a day, it's all driving. Takes about 45 minutes to get loaded, and 45 to unload, and roughly 550 miles driving. Nice change of pace from doing 3 a day and only driving 300 miles.

 

Another thing, I had a gray rubber mallet, so I could smack the trailer and not have any black marks (my trailer was pretty far from shiny, so there was no polish to scuff). Some of the drivers there recommended some duct tape to wrap around it if a guy had a regular black one. Claw hammer is useful, too, but not for hitting stuff. Sometimes the cam-locks on the hoses liked to stay on and needed a little leverage to pop them loose.

Some places required some tapping (and swearing) with the rubber mallet to get a hose onto a product pipe and locked down (it's a thing to do gently; works well if it's already in place and just needs to be snugged up that last little bit. Whacking a cam lock if it isn't already partially seated and going into its groove would be a good way to snap it off the the connector). This one place was particularly difficult, and they weren't fast about fixing stuff. One time I noticed I was getting a light shower of the smallest bits of pebble lime on the end of my trailer; I saw there was a hole up at the bend at the top of the pipe going into the silo. I shut down, found a guy, told him his pipe had a hole in it and asked him what he wanted me to do. He said, "eh, been like that since last week, keep unloading". It wasnt hitting the tractor and the trailer wasn't going to suffer from it, so I did as I was told. Took them another week to bother with fixing it.

 

That sounds pretty good. The longest run I ever had with the pneumatic job was 700 miles, and mostly they were 200-300 miles or so. Some even closer to local distance. It got old spending so much time loading and unloading vs driving; this is why I'm not going back there, though they asked me to when I called to make sure my reference was still there. I always wanted to try liquid tankers anyway.

 

My longest run with a tanker was like 1100 miles, with my last job. Ive been running local for the last six years, running three loads a night, averaging about 400 mile total a night. So this is a welcome change, for now anyways.

 

All cleaned up with one of our brand new tanks
http://s1325.photobucket.com/user/kbruns301/media/IMG_7096_zps44qguccq.jpg.html][/URL]

 

My baby. note to self, dont give your personal rig to an employee.... youll never get it back the way you once had it.

 

I'm a company driver and I know this!

 

its hard to keep a nice truck when running cement and ash. The mils down here arnt the cleanest and neather are the ready mix plants we deliver to.

Any one here running stephens dry bulk tanks? Whats your opnion? Ive got 3 of them bought them from a frac company in texas that went under. Trailers are 2011 all had less then 25k miles. I like them better then the heils that i have.