The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

Well, I took the plunge into the wacky world of pneumatics. Im actually really enjoying it. Its real fun playing with all the valves to see what works and what doesnt.

Im curious though. What is the point of the trailers with 4 hoppers? My company has both 3 and 4 hopper trailers. Ive been using a 3 hopper and have always been loaded to 78-80k. People Ive been running into with the 4 hoppers hate them. They are longer, weigh a little bit more empty, and are more of a hassle to load/unload due to the extra hopper? And they say your never loaded to the top or you'll be over weight. So whats the purpose of having 4 hoppers?

 

Depends on the product being hauled I'd guess; the extra space is necessary sometimes. When I was doing it, I hauled mostly lime and flyash with a 4 compartment trailer. Sometimes it was hydrated lime, and that stuff is so fluffy the trailer would be filled, then I’d have to close it up and pressurize it to tamp it down some, and then they’d dump some more in. Sometimes twice. The flyash filled it pretty well to get a full load, too. I assume there may be other reasons? *shrug*

I didn’t mind the 4 compartments for the most part; what bothered me was that the outlets on the bottom were slanted instead of vertical (it had larger hatches that could be opened on the bottom, apparently they used to have accounts back in the day that that’s how they had to unload the trailers, sounded awful) so it took more time to get it properly cleaned out.

Funny, I did this, and then moved to liquid tanks and am now hauling fuel. Grass is always greener, I guess. Company I did pneumatic for didn’t pay as well as I thought it would, but they were alright. For where I am, I’m doing a lot better with the fuel (first tank job pulling food grade didn’t pay great either for what it was, OTR), and I don’t always enjoy the day cab, but it looks good when I park it at the end of the day and go home.

What prompted you to quit hauling fuel? I’ve heard from so many guys doing fuel that they’d never want to do another kind of driving again. Needed to hit the open road and try something new?

 

Oh ok. We haul all kinds of stuff including the fly ash and lime. Ive only hauled catalysts and a little bit of salt so far, so I dont really have much experience on what is fluffy and what is heavy. Maybe the little bit of extra weight for a 4 hopper is ok since its more versatile.

I left fuel hauling simply to get back on the road. I really enjoyed it, and if I ever go back to local work Im going straight back to it haha. I knew I didnt want to do reefer or dry van OTR. I was interested in flatbed, but this small pneumatic company near where I lived had some ads on craigslist. The sales lady made it sound pretty good, and so far Im happy. Personally, I dont think OTR is worth it financially since you can usually sacrifice 5k a year to be home every day. But in my case, I dont have a family to support, so I am able to cancel my apartment and just bum couches off friends for hometime .... so I basically pocket 95% of my income compared to spending loads of money on rent/cable/internet/electricity doing local work.

Fuel is really enjoyable on night shift.

 

Like @CaptainGoatYak said the number of hoppers and cubic foot capacity of the trailer all depend on the product being hauled. We run 3, 4, and 5 hopper pneumatics. We run everything from sand to flour.

 

Welp, I pulled a 4 hopper the other day. Was a preloaded trailer at our yard going to an oil refinery in texas. It actually feels like it rides better because its a tad longer. Plus, after I delivered, my empty weight was only 1,000lbs heavier than the 3 hopper tank.

Someone showed me a cool trick to switch the weight around in the tank. One of our main shippers (actually most all of our shippers) like to put the majority of the weight on our trailer axle and leave our drives super light. Well, when I picked up the preloaded trailer it had like 36500 on the trailer and 29000 on the drives. I called my shop and they gave me a trick. They had me pressure up the tank with the fluffers to about 12psi, then I would open the blow down wide open for a couple seconds. This ends up creating a vacuum and sucking product from the back to the front. I did it about 3 or 4 times and move the trailer gauge from 70psi to like 62psi. Took all of 10 minutes haha.

 

Or just slam on the brakes too. Usually helps if there is a hill. That is a cool trick but DO NOT USE IT with a powdery product. Lol

 

I never had to do that, but one time unloading I was able to unplug a hose with an empty hopper by basically doing that. I hauled a lot of pebble lime; even patiently babysitting it that still sometimes plugged up. Especially when the customer told me to blow off into a full silo... (that was my favorite).

 

Yea most people here just slam the brakes. Especially at our main shipper they have a really steep hill coming out of the plant to the guard shack so it helps a lot. Thing is, from what the other drivers tell me, is that you have to do that real soon after its loaded because once the product settles it wont budge. Which is why that vacuum trick is handy.

I havent dealt with any major plug ups yet thank god. But that is one thing they taught me. If you have an empty hopper you can vacuum the plugged product into it. The few small plugs Ive had were real simple to fix. A few of them I would just constantly cut the line air on and off to try and blast it out. One time I just picked the product hose up and slammed it on the ground a couple times. Ive heard some people have to shut everything down and unhook the hose to try and clear it.

When we haul spent catalyst, the stuff is real nasty. Filled with jagged rocks sometimes. The places we deliver it to have to use a filter between the tank and the product line to catch all the rocks. Usually have to clear the filter about 2 times for each hopper. Its taken me near 2.5 hours each time to unload that stuff. Fortunately they have staff babysit you while you unload. Them guys know every trick to getting them lines cleared since they deall with it all day long, haha.

 

That sounds fairly awful. Pebble lime was bad enough, that sometimes had some pretty big chunks in it. I heard a guy where I worked plugged his lines so badly he had to take apart the product pipe on the trailer before he got air through it. I don’t see how anything could get that bad unless you walked away and weren’t paying attention. I never did that, so I never had a plug that took more than a minute to unplug.