Well this is fuel hauling, so multiple stops or loads in a day to service stations. Even if they had rail service set up at the gas station for delivery, rail companies in the US hate small customers like that these days.
Just a couple of years ago in my neighborhood a truck driver was arrested because he offloaded 4000 gallons of gasoline at a gas station, then ran the hose down an embankment next to the station and pumped the remaining 8000 gallons into a creek. He did this because he wanted to go home and didn’t feel like making the rest of his stops. He apparently thought nobody would notice; for bonus points this was right next to a charter school which had to be evacuated while they cleaned up the mess.
He was arrested and sentenced to 20+ years in prison. This is the intelligence level that can get hired as a fuel truck driver (TBF I’m sure they’re not all that stupid).
Edit: just for funsies, the gas station where this happened recently rebranded as a “Freedom Fuel” station lol.
I’ve herd of people dumping the news papers they had to deliver in order to say they diliverd them. But this is different. Doesn’t the guy need to get the invoice signed at every station?
I think his strategy was to tell his bosses he had run out of fuel and wouldn’t be able to make the rest of his deliveries. But I dunno, the articles about this never said what his thought process was. I drive past this station twice a day and the stink from it was horrible. 8000 gallons is a lot of fucking gas.
This reminds me that years ago I was friends with a bunch of Red Bull girls. Their job was to pick up the Red Bull mini-cooper, fill it with cases of Red Bull and then drive around handing out free samples wherever people were while being attractive. They were very good at the being attractive part, but most days they would just drive to the river, dump the cases of Red Bull in it, and then go home and get high. Their bosses suspected something like this was going on and gave them all Windows Mobile PDAs that tracked their location by GPS. I checked out the tracking app (I was a Windows Mobile developer at the time) and it turned out it just logged their GPS coordinates once an hour into a plain text file. I showed them how to edit the file to make it look like they were driving around – just doing my part saving at least some people from trying fucking Red Bull.
The only way this would be more efficient would for direct piping but this would be less efficient as you would need to create a network and not all stations would want to sign up. The airports in the UK operat this but this was so it’s harder to cut supplies off to airports as they are critical infrastructure.
It was made expensive by letting the oil companies force regulatory capture on it, then tear up all the rails they let could. There were more rails in the US 100 years ago then there are today. Adding stops didn’t take years when there were already rails near by to branch off of. The only reason adding stops is so hard now it because the cut down lines.
One train stop (utility freight, not passanger) is much larger, sure. But how many tons does it process compared to an 18-wheeler? Then, in high density urban centers where you have passenger trains, they normally put them underground. Meaning, the only “land” they take up is about the size of 2 pumps, without the accompanying convenient store. Meanwhile, they remove thousands of cars off the road per day.
It is unquestionably more efficient to run more trains for both freight or passenger. That is why oil and gas hate it. So they buy-in and stack the boards of the rail companies, beg congress for more “regulation and safety”, and cripple expansion with mandatory oversight comittees to slow down whatever gets through. All classic plays.
and what about in less urban areas, where there are a higher number of gas stations per person? where you don’t need more than a semitruck of gasoline/desil/propane per week?
If you’re driving 16 hours a day, then your cargo should probably be going by rail.
Well this is fuel hauling, so multiple stops or loads in a day to service stations. Even if they had rail service set up at the gas station for delivery, rail companies in the US hate small customers like that these days.
Hm now I’m wondering how the volumes compare, between what one truck carries and how much one gas station stores.
I just noticed I have no idea how large those burried tanks are.
Just a couple of years ago in my neighborhood a truck driver was arrested because he offloaded 4000 gallons of gasoline at a gas station, then ran the hose down an embankment next to the station and pumped the remaining 8000 gallons into a creek. He did this because he wanted to go home and didn’t feel like making the rest of his stops. He apparently thought nobody would notice; for bonus points this was right next to a charter school which had to be evacuated while they cleaned up the mess.
He was arrested and sentenced to 20+ years in prison. This is the intelligence level that can get hired as a fuel truck driver (TBF I’m sure they’re not all that stupid).
Edit: just for funsies, the gas station where this happened recently rebranded as a “Freedom Fuel” station lol.
I’ve herd of people dumping the news papers they had to deliver in order to say they diliverd them. But this is different. Doesn’t the guy need to get the invoice signed at every station?
I think his strategy was to tell his bosses he had run out of fuel and wouldn’t be able to make the rest of his deliveries. But I dunno, the articles about this never said what his thought process was. I drive past this station twice a day and the stink from it was horrible. 8000 gallons is a lot of fucking gas.
This reminds me that years ago I was friends with a bunch of Red Bull girls. Their job was to pick up the Red Bull mini-cooper, fill it with cases of Red Bull and then drive around handing out free samples wherever people were while being attractive. They were very good at the being attractive part, but most days they would just drive to the river, dump the cases of Red Bull in it, and then go home and get high. Their bosses suspected something like this was going on and gave them all Windows Mobile PDAs that tracked their location by GPS. I checked out the tracking app (I was a Windows Mobile developer at the time) and it turned out it just logged their GPS coordinates once an hour into a plain text file. I showed them how to edit the file to make it look like they were driving around – just doing my part saving at least some people from trying fucking Red Bull.
The only way this would be more efficient would for direct piping but this would be less efficient as you would need to create a network and not all stations would want to sign up. The airports in the UK operat this but this was so it’s harder to cut supplies off to airports as they are critical infrastructure.
rail has ludicrously expensive infrastructure and no way of adding new stops in less than multiple years.
It was made expensive by letting the oil companies force regulatory capture on it, then tear up all the rails they let could. There were more rails in the US 100 years ago then there are today. Adding stops didn’t take years when there were already rails near by to branch off of. The only reason adding stops is so hard now it because the cut down lines.
don’t train stops still need significantly more land than is practical for individual gas stations to have?
One train stop (utility freight, not passanger) is much larger, sure. But how many tons does it process compared to an 18-wheeler? Then, in high density urban centers where you have passenger trains, they normally put them underground. Meaning, the only “land” they take up is about the size of 2 pumps, without the accompanying convenient store. Meanwhile, they remove thousands of cars off the road per day.
It is unquestionably more efficient to run more trains for both freight or passenger. That is why oil and gas hate it. So they buy-in and stack the boards of the rail companies, beg congress for more “regulation and safety”, and cripple expansion with mandatory oversight comittees to slow down whatever gets through. All classic plays.
and what about in less urban areas, where there are a higher number of gas stations per person? where you don’t need more than a semitruck of gasoline/desil/propane per week?