Lesson learned
Gauge not working=fill before moving and if you have truck overnight for few days fill every day.
Refuse to take truck out if away for few days.
Or do what yourself did and just drive till its dry and blame somebody else,
Winseer:
If the fuel gauge is broken, then you’d pick it up on the walkaround checks we’re all supposed to do.
Rubbish especially on trucks with anti-syphon necks.
I don’t know of a way the gauge can be “broken” so the thing appears to be full up, which is the way you’d expect to find a vehicle on takeover - right?
No, not right. A dead short to earth in the wiring from the sender unit, you know like can happen when the wiring loom has spent a few hundred thousand miles rubbing up against the chassis, or within the sender unit itself will send the needle on the fuel gauge over to full.
Another lesson learned the hard way.
Never take it for granted that a fuel gauge is working,or that the previous driver said the fuel is OK,always if possible take the cap off yourself and look,if you can`t then pull on the pumps to make sure,for your own piece of mind.
especially during dark winter nights and early mornings then if its too dark to see, sometimes dropping a lit match of a piece of burning paper down the filer neck can help when checking it.always remember to wear your hi viz and a good pair of gloves when doing so as you can never be too carefull when it comes to personal safety.
take a reality check here…your a limper…you dropped a bollok,they let you loose in truck knowing full well your a limper…anything that happens thereafter is entirely their own doing for using limper.similar rules for using taliban or flipflops…foy uoi peronally its a who cares,walk away,and any greif use another of the 100 or so agencys looking for xmas bums on xmas seats.
Errr … whatever happened to giving the tank a tap with your fist to guage how full it is?? 
peirre:
Errr … whatever happened to giving the tank a tap with your fist to guage how full it is??
Got side skirts on the truck, so only hear noise of tapping plastic. 
Try aiming a toecap discreetly under the skirt aimed at the bottom of the tank
peirre:
Errr … whatever happened to giving the tank a tap with your fist to guage how full it is??
Thank you, and this is why im here. Cant believe none of the older guys whove taught me since passing have mentioned this,
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Wonder if this is what happened to the guy who ran out at ferry bridge services today.
He almost made it, but there was a green flag guy filling the artic’s fueltank from jerry cans right before the car park, so missed the pumps by maybe 300 yards. Unfortunately being uphill you cant coast it.
Conor:
Winseer:
If the fuel gauge is broken, then you’d pick it up on the walkaround checks we’re all supposed to do.Rubbish especially on trucks with anti-syphon necks.
I don’t know of a way the gauge can be “broken” so the thing appears to be full up, which is the way you’d expect to find a vehicle on takeover - right?
No, not right. A dead short to earth in the wiring from the sender unit, you know like can happen when the wiring loom has spent a few hundred thousand miles rubbing up against the chassis, or within the sender unit itself will send the needle on the fuel gauge over to full.
Maybe I’ve just been spoilt these last few years, having not driven any trucks over 6 years old. I’ve never come across the scenarios you’ve mentioned in 25 years of driving various different trucks for many firms over the period, many of them in the past 6 years on agency. In any case, wouldn’t a driver notice whilst on their outward journey, that the gauge isn’t acting the way they were expecting? - Eg. dropping very slowly each hour of continuous motorway driving?
Also, if you jumped in a truck without a full tank - and broke down from lack of fuel, you were out of the door in just about every place I’ve ever worked.
This policy also motivated me into putting a gallon in myself when driving a 7.5t a long time ago, not noticing until the buzzer sounded when it went into the red on the fuel gauge… 
Eric Rambler:
Recovery is expensive, better to bring a can of fuel and put it in the tank.
I’m not sure if you need to bleed a modern truck (because I never drive one 
) but if you do then you would also need the right size spanner to undo the injectors, and need to know what to do to bleed it. I’m not sure that an agency driver should need to take cans of diesel and spanners to work with him because a fuel gauge might not be working properly, as a limper myself an Aldi carrier bag is as much as I can be arsed to take to work.
Driver fault.thank you.
muckles:
peirre:
Errr … whatever happened to giving the tank a tap with your fist to guage how full it is??Got side skirts on the truck, so only hear noise of tapping plastic.
peirre:
Try aiming a toecap discreetly under the skirt aimed at the bottom of the tank
Was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment really, I have been known to tap a fuel tank trying to work out how much fuel left in it. 
Harry Monk:
Eric Rambler:
Recovery is expensive, better to bring a can of fuel and put it in the tank.I’m not sure if you need to bleed a modern truck (because I never drive one
I don’t think you need to crack off the injectors anymore, at least I didn’t when it happened to me, (twin tanks playing up, so siphoned some out of one tank and put it into the empty tank) just had to get the fuel up to the filters, which meant tilting the cab, but there was a pump on top of the filters, so no tools needed, well just the one operating the pump.
When I limped a few years back at boots Nottingham I took a nearly new DAF to Spennymoor and back with a full tank, it seemed to be going down quickly but when I informed the office they assumed the sensor was faulty and it was way over the reading.
I ran out on the slip road into tibshelf south much to the annoyance of lots of truck drivers beeping at me as if I’d parked there on purpose with hazards flashing 
Turns out there was a small pipe leaking behind the tank somewhere not a chance any driver would of picked up on it, don’t judge a book by its cover some of the comments on here are disgusting.
Eric Rambler:
Recovery is expensive, better to bring a can of fuel and put it in the tank.
I wouldn’t, much too dangerous as if it spilt and got damaged, would be very toxic
Isn’t it always at the agency cost to cover the break down expenses anyhow?
Dont the majority of trucks have a gauge and light test button these days surly a fulty fuel gauge will be picked up with using that