The Pneumatic Tanker Thread

Roberts450, does your trailer have swingaways on the bottoms of the hopper tees?

Beau, the line you use to blow into the pig should open into the top of the pig, so there should be no product blowing back into the discharge hose. When you get done unloading and cleaning out, shut off the blower, close the line valve, open the blowdown and one hopper valve so that the backpressure will all escape through your blowdown. Once it's all at atmospheric pressure (0 on the gauges), it's safe to unhook. Of course, the customer needs to clean or replace the sock, but until they do...

 

No hopper traps on our trailers. They are all solid pipe as we are always blowing into silos and we are food grade so need to keep things water tight as possible and thats always a struggle here in the northwest. Lol

 

Great idea for a thread! I have been pulling a vacuum/pneumatic trailer hauling plastic pellets for two years now. I really have come to enjoy pulling a pneumatic tanker. We vacuum load the pellets off of a rail car and deliver them to injection molding companies. We typically unload into silos, every once in a while we unload into gaylord boxes. Average unload time is an hour to an hour and a half. Same for loading. I just started with a new company and so far it is my absolute dream job! Its interesting to read your posts about cement, sand, flour etc... The company I work for also has five or six cement trailers, so that may be in my future as well.

Picture of my rig

 

I hate those things! I had to unload PVC powder threw one of those screens. I couldn't open my product Valve more than 40 % with out plugging. It was about 4 hrs to unload. Long push as well. About 400 feet of silo pipe.

 

I'm beginning to think Lehigh Cement is the AntiChrist. We have two Lehigh plants within 90 miles of home base, the closest one is about 50 miles, and is the worst place in the world. They take FOREVER to load, and everyone there seems to hate their job. The other one is fully automated and is really nice.

So I found out this morning that one of my gravy runs is going away, as the customer is switching to Lehigh at the end of the month. And to make it worse, they want the product out of the evil plant. Even though it's closer for them to pull it out of the nice plant.

All of this means less money to the driver, along with a big increase in health insurance premiums. Now UPS is looking more appealing every day. I dunno...

 

Friend of mine started at UPS last October and has a bid run already. They're hiring people off the street as feeder drivers and getting bid runs within a year. Must be getting desperate I guess

Then again, the freedom I enjoy here would be tough to walk away from.

 

220 stops a day? That sounds absolutely awful! No wonder those UPS drivers are always running around like a madman