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ABF | Haz mat problems

Just spoke with the Haz Mat Compliance Agent @ the Indy DOT office. He said by law you had to apply or remove the placards when the material reached the weight requirement. He also mentioned you had to have a proper storage area for Haz Mat on the dock & there are different storage requirements depending on the material. So, if you are really concerned about safety on the dock, invite your local Compliance Officer to have a look see. Usually ABF would have 120 days to correct any violations.
 
ABFer said:
Didn't anyone ever teach you the trick to that? If you spray the placard with ether (not a whole lot) and light it, it burns off fast and the placards peel off like a fresh new roll of electrical tape.
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Yea, we always went out there with a hand held torch, if we could find a bottle of gas that had gas. von.
 
ABFer said:
Didn't anyone ever teach you the trick to that? If you spray the placard with ether (not a whole lot) and light it, it burns off fast and the placards peel off like a fresh new roll of electrical tape.
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It is especially fun when burning off flammable or explosive placards.
 
Per our regional safety man at 089 haz mat doesn't have to have a safe haven nor does it matter if stored in a trap trailer without placards.I guess we just wait for it to be a "problem".
 
falconhobo said:
Per our regional safety man at 089 haz mat doesn't have to have a safe haven nor does it matter if stored in a trap trailer without placards.I guess we just wait for it to be a "problem".
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It sounds like the company would like to re-write HAZ-MAT laws on their property to comply with whatever the bean-counters say is the cheapest way of doing things.......

Our terminal (310) is in the middle of a residential area. I would think we had a civic responsibility to properly flag and tag HAZ-MAT shipments whether they were being trapped in a trailer, stored on the dock, or going out on the street.

Right beside our terminal is a walking trail and an active railroad siding. The railroad was " trapping" rail tank cars of ethanol, placarded "Flammable", mind you,......within 5 foot of the walking trail, and 25 foot of our terminal........

Didn't really bother me too much until I saw an idiot on the walking trail flick his cigarette butt against the side of a tank car......
 
canaryinthemine said:
It sounds like the company would like to re-write HAZ-MAT laws on their property to comply with whatever the bean-counters say is the cheapest way of doing things.......

Our terminal (310) is in the middle of a residential area. I would think we had a civic responsibility to properly flag and tag HAZ-MAT shipments whether they were being trapped in a trailer, stored on the dock, or going out on the street.

Right beside our terminal is a walking trail and an active railroad siding. The railroad was " trapping" rail tank cars of ethanol, placarded "Flammable", mind you,......within 5 foot of the walking trail, and 25 foot of our terminal........

Didn't really bother me too much until I saw an idiot on the walking trail flick his cigarette butt against the side of a tank car......
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WOW. Sounds like one of our former drivers that liked smoking in between the propane tanks. It never bothered him to light up near dozens of propane tanks , hoping there's no problems.
 
had a driver go through a restricted tunnel with a rear placard on. all the placards were removed but the one against the dock. He didn't catch it and it cost him.
 
disgruntled teamster said:
had a driver go through a restricted tunnel with a rear placard on. all the placards were removed but the one against the dock. He didn't catch it and it cost him.
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Another example of not doing a pre trip. If he wasn't paid to do his pre trip, he had about 5 or 10 minutes of un-paid time which works out to 4.00 an hour based on 24.00 per hour. Now, how much was that ticket?
 
disgruntled teamster said:
had a driver go through a restricted tunnel with a rear placard on. all the placards were removed but the one against the dock. He didn't catch it and it cost him.
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Now THIS is something that should show up in the window for us to peruse and learn from, instead of a picture of some kind of damaged freight one morning.
 
Working at a non union shop, our hazmat responsibilities are different then yours. Even though the dock is required to placard and remove placards, from any trailer that they load hazmat on, that requires placards, or no longer has hazmat on it, after it's unloaded, it is the drivers responsibility to recheck the hazmat bills for correct paperwork and to correct any placarding mistakes. That's what the employee manual says, but in reality, the dock seldom placards trailers, which could result in a big fine, if the dock and yard were audited for compliance, by the DOT. That's on the terminal. But to be honest, that's fine with me. It takes maybe 5 minutes to check the hazmat bills against the manifest. Usually, the paperwork is right but, if there was a problem, it usually is no Bill Of Lading, which is an easy fix by having the office print a copy. When I do my last walk around, I check and flip the placards and off I go. If I get a Hazmat ticket for bad paperwork or wrong placards, that's on me, and I'll certainly hear about it from the Safety Department and my wife, when she writes the check for the fine.
 
Dracula said:
Working at a non union shop, our hazmat responsibilities are different then yours.
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Our contract has no language addressing the handling of placards, those issues are addressed by the DOT and are the same for all companies and drivers nationwide. But the driver is the last one responsible to check for errors.
 
pennzoil said:
all of these problems can be traced back to when they took billing out of the terminals and set up relief billing in Dayton to save money, end result is this is what you get.
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They lost a lot of control because of taking all the billing to Dayton. Not just in Haz Mat like we have discussed but in so many other ways. + You are still paying someone to image the bills & fax them. 35 grand for health & welfare + 45 grand in wages each year & that is what they save by eliminating 1 billing position in each barn. * 200 terminals add up to a lot of money saved but how much do you lose by consolidating those positions? Can anyone think of the things you have lost by not having that clerk in you terminal based on what Dayton does now? von
 
ABFer said:
You do it after the hazmats have been removed, silly goose.
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This silly goose has a thought or question. Shrink Wrap posted on the 1st page of this subject the problems @ 086 include wrong placards. Now, if you have to remove the wrong placards on a loaded Haz Mat trailer with the outside temp being 15 above 0 & you can’t find the or any scrapper that will do the job, does your supervisor tell you to unload that trailer, and then remove the WRONG PLACARDS?, or just go ahead @ use the blow torch to remove them with the freight still on board. This silly goose thinks the supervisor will hand you the torch & tell you to be careful. Von aka Silly Goose.
 
vongrimmenstein said:
This silly goose has a thought or question. Shrink Wrap posted on the 1st page of this subject the problems @ 086 include wrong placards. Now, if you have to remove the wrong placards on a loaded Haz Mat trailer with the outside temp being 15 above 0 & you can’t find the or any scrapper that will do the job, does your supervisor tell you to unload that trailer, and then remove the WRONG PLACARDS?, or just go ahead @ use the blow torch to remove them with the freight still on board. This silly goose thinks the supervisor will hand you the torch & tell you to be careful. Von aka Silly Goose.
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Oh yeah? Well...see...I'm a fart smeller and I would apply the right placards right over the wrong ones and it solves two problems. 1) Next guy gets to deal with it (aint' I nice?) 2) Voila wrong placards are now proper placards. he he he
 
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