Skip to content

Tanker · Baffled, Un-baffled, and Compartmented Tanks

You are loading a tank divided into smaller tanks by bulkheads, and later dropping part of the load. Besides the total weight, what has to be watched?

1.How the weight is spread between compartments, since loading one end heavily can overload it even while the total stays legal, and emptying one shifts the balance againCorrect answer
2.Nothing further, because bulkheads are assumed to make the compartments level themselves out automatically as the vehicle moves down the road
3.Only the order the compartments happen to be filled in, which the loading rack's own pump schedule decides on its own anyway regardless
4.Only each compartment's temperature that particular trip, since weight distribution is fixed permanently by the shape of the tank itself

Explanation

With a bulkheaded tank the driver has to watch weight distribution as well as gross weight, because the compartments fill and empty separately and loading either end of the vehicle heavily overloads that end even when the total is within limits. The same applies in reverse on a multi-stop run: emptying one compartment redistributes what is left, so a combination that was balanced leaving the rack may not be after the first delivery. 49 CFR 383.119(c) makes the handling of baffled and compartmented interiors a required knowledge area for this endorsement but states no loading practice, so the attention to distribution is the manual's. The wrong options all hand the problem to something else, a self-levelling property bulkheads do not have (being liquid-tight is exactly why one compartment cannot balance another), the pump, or temperature, when the variable that actually moves is where the mass sits along the vehicle.

Source: 49 CFR 383.119(c)

Drill Baffled, Un-baffled, and Compartmented Tanks questions

Related Baffled, Un-baffled, and Compartmented Tanks questions