Advice For A New Tanker Driver

Hello. I am new to the tanking world. I am not new to driving a rig but new to food grade smooth bore tankers. Anyone have any tips and pointers they can give? The surge is a scary thing sometimes specially when you forget and get hit with it. I am really worried about it with winter quickly aproaching. So any advice would be appreciated.

I used to drive dry vans and reefers doing produce. Moved closer to home and found a small tanking company out of NY. Been doing this for a few weeks now, and am trying to eat up as much information as I can specially about winter driving with tankers. Thanks for any help you can give.

Hopefully Brett will chime in. He the only one off the top of my head that has drive food grade tanker. Besides, I want to eventually drive food grade tanker and I am looking forward to reading the responses you get.

Not to many tanker drivers on here?

Not to many tanker drivers on here?

I dont have food grade tanker experience. But I do have hazmat gasoline tanker experience.

But yeah, we definitely lack tanker drivers. You have to be crazy in the head to want to drive one so there isnt a whole lot of tanker drivers.

Not to many tanker drivers on here?

I dont have food grade tanker experience. But I do have hazmat gasoline tanker experience.

But yeah, we definitely lack tanker drivers. You have to be crazy in the head to want to drive one so there isnt a whole lot of tanker drivers.

Add me to the crazy in the head drivers lol. I drive doing oilfield work now and while it's not the smoothbore experience your looking for, I didnt.find the surge too bad unless I had less than a full load. From what I've heard the surge is the equivalent of a half load in a baffled tank to a full load of smoothbore. And that half loads in a smoothbore are pretty bad but still manageable as long as you go slow and smooth.

Hey there! I actually do food grade tanker and like stated yes it is a smooth bore tank meaning it has no baffles. I can tell you driving a tanker is a whole different world. You are basically driving a loaded missle down the highway. You must do things a lot different. The key is always be slow and methodical. Your takeoffs and stop need to be slow and smooth because the surge is very real and will work against you so much. Especially when coming to a stop you need to brake gently and slowly. If you get in a situation where you hard brake and try to stop at the last minute the surge can literally push your truck forward, possibly into the intersection into oncoming traffic.

Also you will find you relearning shifting if you have ever driven a different type of truck. Again this needs to be slow and methodical in a good fluid motion. This actually took some work for me to get used to learning to shift with the timing of the surge so that I am not missing gears and possibly stalling the truck, especially on upgrades.

Another thing is speed is very dangerous. When you see curves and exit ramp speed limit signs never and I repeat never follow those. I generally go 10 to even 15mph slower than they say. That is another thing carrying a tanker is it is very very easy to roll over as the load is very top heavy. I generally carry 48000 lbs a lot of times and all that weight is sitting up in the air inside the tank so always use extreme caution. I have heard of tanks rolling over at parking lot speeds so it does happen. However I truly enjoy the tanker game and honestly never plan on doing anything else.

Add me to the mix, I left Averitt an now I drive a propane tanker (bulk) more money, one load a day.....