After 43 Years, Learning the Other Side of Vapor Recovery
Driver Jeff McMannus checks progress as he delivers a load of biofuel. He was careful to avoid spills. Photos: Tom Berg
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Driver Jeff McMannus checks progress as he delivers a load of biofuel. He was careful to avoid spills. Photos: Tom Berg
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It’s good to get out on the road and see what’s going on. While driving across northern Illinois the other day I pulled off I-80 and into a Flying J truck stop and, after using the facilities and buying a bottle of pop, walked out to the fueling area to photograph some of the more colorful rigs.
In that few minutes, a tanker moved along one side of the complex and stopped. Its driver laid down a hefty hose and connected it to the wet line beneath the tanker. He had put a bucket under the connecting point to catch any spillage. There wasn’t any, but I thought, this guy’s being careful.
He dropped the hose’s nozzle into place where he had removed a cover in the pavement. Then he returned to the tanker, twisted a valve handle, and the unseen product began flowing into the underground tank. I thought was a shipment of diesel fuel.
“Not diesel,” said driver Jeff MacMannus. “Biofuel.”
“You mean biodiesel?” I asked.
“No, just bio,” he said. “They mix it with diesel with equipment they have here.”
“What kind of bio?” I inquired.
“I don’t really know,” he said, shrugging. “I just haul it.” He’d been driving for this company, Kane Transport, for just a few weeks and liked it. He’d spent seven years hauling freight containers, and it was a pain dealing with the loads and the customers. While the money was good, too often the containers were too heavy and that led to fines.
“One day I got a fine for $2,700 for being too heavy for the bridge,” he related, pointing to the area between the tractor’s and trailer’s tandems (that distance is called the inner bridge by authorities). “The container weighed …Read the rest of this story
