Leyland600:
Hi Dennis , No I did not have any fancy lightbars on the cab but on second thoughts perhaps I should have had a small searchlight point upwards on the cab roof as many farmers situated their bulk bins or milking parlour intake pipes in such a position that I was tipping the body underneath power cables a bit ropey on dark nights. One of Carr’s drivers a very experienced lad was tipping his ERF 6 wheeler feed tanker under cables one day in daylight with a reasonable gap between the top of the tank and cables with the discharge pipe clear of the ground. He was blowing away merrily when suddenly there was, a flash and a bang, the unicone clamp on the tank - hose connection flew open with cake spewing everywhere. The static electicity that can build up in the discharge pipe and through the vehicle pulled the cable further down until it contacted the wagon with the results described. Not wishing to touch the wagon until it was earthed the driver found a piece of steel bar and dropped it against the chassis before reaching in to stop the PTO to the blower. How he managed to get in and stop the engine I cannot remember but the incident gave us all a shock as we had all been in a similar situation at one farm or another. It was often good policy to fit an extra pipe in the discharge line and keep away from cables. I can recall pointing a torch skywards looking for cables at a new farm location just to make sure there were no cables that could cause problems on a dark winter night away out in the wilds.
Cheers, Leyland 600
Hi, your story reminds me of one of the loads I carried in Saudi. (Sorry, Uncle Albert again, ‘Durin’ the war…') We never knew what was coming off the docks from Behring in the USA. One shipment of 20 or 30 trailers was to supply some sort of gravel plant up near the Kuwait Border (which reminds me in turn that on that job, John Longhorn saw a camel sleeping on the tarmac in the dark at the last second and swerved enough to avoid doing fatal damage to his truck, but the camel was less lucky. They used to sleep on the road because it was warmer than the sand in Winter).
On the port, I hooked up to a tanker trailer, which was empty. When I got back to the yard, Peter Best, the TM, asked me to take it up to Aramco and fill it with petrol and take it up to site, I think it was somewhere up near Nariyah. When I got to Aramco to load, the Egyptian loader asked where he could attach the static line. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. He explained that he was looking for a bare copper earthing tag, and we both looked around the trailer, but couldn’t find any connection point. I asked if it really mattered as I ‘was in a bit of a hurry.’
He smiled and said ‘Only if you want to live. The static will build up as we load the tank. If it has nowhere to go…BOOM! All Aramco will be gone!’ I went back to the yard, hammered flat some copper pipe and made a tag, sandpapered and drilled a flange on the trailer and bolted it on. When I got back up to Aramco, he allowed me to load, and it didn’t go BOOM.
That was my first experience of pulling a tanker and it certainly felt strange as the liquid moved back and forward as you accelerated and braked.
John.