Flammable gases, caustic liquids, heavy grains, gallons of milk – thousands of tankers full of these bulk commodities cruise along at highway speeds every day on the nation’s roadways. Behind each tanker, logistics teams spend hours training and planning to maximize safety and minimize risks that come with moving bulk freight.
Pete Heffern, Director of Bulk & Project Logistics at Shaker Logistics, provides insight into how experienced 3PLs keep bulk tanker shipping safe, compliant, and scalable for growth-minded manufacturers.
Breaking down bulk transportation
Manufacturers across the chemical, pharmaceutical, food & beverage, and energy industries require huge quantities of raw materials to keep production going smoothly. Commodities like polymers, adhesives, grains, compressed gases, and plastics are commonly shipped in bulk quantities on specially designed tanker trailers to meet manufacturing demand.
Moving thousands of pounds of unpackaged, often hazardous goods requires expertise, adaptability, and creativity. Above all, these moves need to be completed with special attention to safety in order to protect the product and the people moving it.
Safety first
Imagine the mess and cost of spilling an entire tanker of plastic pellets on the highway, or the environmental hazards that could result from a spilled adhesive tanker. Pete Heffern and the Shaker bulk logistics team work with many bulk shippers who list safety as a top concern.
“Safety should be a top-town practice involving everyone. If we don’t know how to safely route and monitor a tanker full of caustic chemicals, we can’t expect our drivers to safely deliver it,” said Pete. “We have a responsibility to our clients to protect their product and the people handling it, so we take safety incredibly seriously.”
Shaker takes a three-pronged approach to safety in bulk transportation:
1. Behind the wheel
As the only ones who can physically check the condition of a tanker on the road, drivers are the front lines of bulk safety.
Before they can even haul bulk goods, drivers take a tanker endorsement training course about safely hauling a tanker trailer and avoiding “tanker turnover,” when a tanker rolls over on its side. Turnover is caused by slosh (the side-to-side motion of goods in a tanker) and surge (the forward-backward motion of goods in a tanker), which can be minimized with safe driving practices.
In addition to getting a tanker endorsement, drivers hauling bulk chemicals, gases, and other hazardous materials participate in regular hazmat training. There they learn methods for preventing hazmat accidents, hazmat route planning, loading and unloading hazardous materials, and how to comply with federal hazmat regulations.
Regulations and safety protocols differ across commodities like polymers, compressed gases, and cryogenic liquids. Shaker dedicates drivers to haul specific classes of commodities, allowing drivers to focus their training and expertise on one type of bulk good.
It can be challenging to secure ready-to-roll capacity for highly sensitive commodities, so training dedicated drivers to have the necessary expertise and PPE on hand for safe, compliant transportation can streamline transportation for bulk shippers in the long run.
“No commodity is out of the question. With enough lead time, our drivers can train to move almost anything our clients ask for, and we can make recovery and repair plans to prevent delays. When shippers communicate early and work collaboratively with their logistics provider, they can virtually guarantee capacity for their projects,” said Pete.
2. Robust equipment
The second most important piece of bulk safety is keeping healthy equipment. Breakdowns can cause costly delays in any shipping mode, but a broken-down truck with a tanker full of compressed hydrogen on the side of the road is an issue of public safety.
To avoid these delays and potential hazards, it’s important to follow an aggressive maintenance schedule on all assets involved in bulk projects. Shaker assigns dedicated trucks to bulk projects for each client and gets a federal inspection done every 6 months to ensure the vehicles are in top shape.
Our team can also manage the maintenance and inspection schedule for a shipper’s own equipment, owning that as part of the overall bulk project to take it off the shipper’s already full plate.
3. Recovery
Nobody pretends that transportation is an easy industry, and logistics veterans know that mishaps can and do happen. Malfunctioning tanker sensors, tires blowing in extreme temperatures, or the lights going out on a tanker are all safety concerns if not properly addressed.
A solid emergency plan is the best way to minimize risks and delays when something goes wrong. Shaker has a nationwide network of maintenance partners, so we can service trucks and tankers closer to where they break down. We work with clients to develop project-specific SOPs for any scenario, with back-up drivers and emergency call numbers for efficient recovery and communication.
Diversifying for Rock-Solid Bulk Capacity
Each commodity can have its own season or geographical capacity constraints, so it’s crucial to rely on a third-party logistics partner who understands the variables that impact carrier availability for a shipper’s needs.
For example, bulk carriers in the South tend to have a lot of petrochemical expertise because of the fuel manufacturers there. A pharmaceutical manufacturer shipping from California to Texas won’t easily find bulk capacity in their target market, as pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals require vastly different training to transport.
Because of this, it’s common for many manufacturers to move bulk products on their own fleet or stick with one carrier for all their bulk shipments. But putting all your bulk eggs in one basket can limit shippers’ ability to scale transportation as their business changes.
“Relying entirely on one carrier can be an increased liability,” said Pete. “Growth-minded shippers often diversify their bulk logistics providers. Having a 3PL as a pinch-hitter for when production ramps up or you start shipping on a tricky lane is the most efficient way to adapt to your market. That’s exactly what Shaker does for our bulk clients.”
Any carrier can arrange for line hauls from pickup to delivery locations, but an inventive and adaptable partner will create capacity in the markets where shippers need it most.
“Building carrier capacity in niche markets takes extensive research, relationship building, and training, that shippers don’t have the time or resources to do alone.” Pete said. “This is where we excel, because we grow with our clients and shift our bulk offering to meet their needs.”
Client story: Custom Cryogenic Capacity
One of Shaker’s energy customers came to the team requesting help with an anticipated increase in their cryogenic tanker shipments to a client. A cryogenic tanker transports liquified gases at extremely cold temperatures, and the tank’s pressure must be monitored closely throughout the shipment to ensure the product stays liquified.
Not wanting our customer to miss an opportunity, Shaker’s team sent one of our tanker-endorsed and hazmat certified fleet drivers to the shipper for a rigorous 8-hour cryogenic tanker training course.
Pete and the team then developed an in-house safety training with information provided by the manufacturer. Once the safety and compliance training was in place, our team was prepared to help the customer scale as soon as they needed it.
Six months later, the customer’s business began to ramp up just as they had predicted. Shaker immediately modified our fleet operations to make the trained driver available, then visited the shipper on-site, along with our Director of Safety and Compliance to re-train and obtain the required head-to-toe PPE.
Back at Shaker’s HQ, the team developed operating guidelines for the driver to check tank pressure readings every 3-5 hours and established a communication chain to regularly share the pressure readings with the shipper, receiver, and manufacturer’s procurement team.
“Bulk logistics is often anything but straightforward, and larger carriers with rigid and established practices can sometimes struggle to adapt to bulk shipping puzzles that don’t have an easy answer. But that’s where our strengths lie,” Pete said. “We have the time to dedicate ourselves to solving the client’s transportation puzzles. When shippers loop us in on their project planning, we can prepare a custom solution and deliver it as the hands-on team they needed.”
A strong partner for bulk tanker transportation
Don’t put a cap on your business growth. Reach out to Shaker today for an experienced bulk transportation team that’s ready to help you move ahead.