History "Remember gas trucks with chains "dangling"

Hey, you guys did so well with the curb alarms, I thought I might provoke some more brain fade!
How many remember seeing ALL gas transportation trucks going down the road with "Grounding Chains" hangin' from the underside with sparks aflyin'????????

 

I remember that!

 

10-4 on the chains on gasoline trucks.....

 

Now I see rubber straps dangling.They don't ground very well?

 

ya remember that and also remember seeing a truck pumping gas..... i ran the other way and called the cops...........he got in trouble

 

they have metal impregnated so yeh, they're supposed to be the same

 

Carbon black in modern tires is conductive, at least enough to provide a path for static electricity, so there is no need to run an extra ground.

 

Sparks and Gasoline,,, go figure,, Yeh I remember that.

 

Yup, remember it well. Remember when there were LOTS of trucks around with tag axles too. Not so much anymore.

 

Jingle, jingle down the street. Yeah, I remember those as a kid. I remember asking my dad what they were for.

And by the way, falcongeorge, what is a "tag axle"?

 

It's a second rear axle to increase the load but it is like a trailer axle and doesn't help drive the truck. In this area they add a fourth axle on the ten wheelers usually behind the cab at the front of the box to increase the load capacity for hauling things like corn or silage from the fields to where they are stored.

 

I also remember them. Kind of "traditional" cool?

 

Yup. In the sixties probably 80-90% of the dump trucks and lumber trucks you would see around here were single screw with a tag axle hanging behind the back axle. Probably been about 35yrs since I have seen one of those set-ups.

 

I remember the chains on gas trucks, and I do remember the tag axles on a lot of the pulpwood (pronounced "pupwood" here, the L is silent) trucks. Years ago, many of the pulpwood trucks around here were rolling death traps, usually the tag axle was just another rear end salvaged from a junked truck and mounted solid to the frame so the tires on it would touch the ground when the rear suspension bottomed out.

 

LOL! Yup, there were a few of those around here too.

 

the busses in our school didtrict all have grounding chains.

 

Jerry Clower told the story about the guy (probably Marcel Ledbetter!) who put those chains on his pickup truck. When asked why, he said "Well, Standard Oil does it and they have millions!"

 

Must be too young (30 something) as I have no clue about this...

 

I remember those very well in M***achusetts.Also a lot of the dump trucks I saw were chain driven rather than having a conventional ring and pinion.(No I'm not THAT old!).
Didn't get to see many tag axles until I moved to Michigan.A lot of trucks around here run them including the gravel trains.There is a gravel pit right down the street from us and they run by all day long.I see a lot of tanker trucks with tag axles mounted;in fact my son just got a job with a local company hauling fuel and ammonium nitrate all over the Midwest.
Michigan is pretty lax as far a road weight goes(I think about double the other states)so you are liable to see just about anything being dragged over the roads here.Regularly see half buildings moving through downtown(the main street is very wide)and wind turbine blades.One day a truck came through with what looked like half a bridge on the bogies(no trailer;just wheels).It was fully half the length of the city block(which is roughly 300 ft.).
Ground straps were pretty common on trucks but I haven't seen any in awhile.Someone mentioned that the carbon black in tires serves that purpose now.Guess I learned something today;never knew that.

 

Out here we haul HUGE loads. Many of our trucks run tag axles. With a pup we can run 117,000 pounds gross in South Dakota. And yes, no need for a ground on our fuel trucks.

 

chances are those chains you see under the school buses are actually automatic tire chains that drop down via an air chamber and spin under the tires.....don't think a chain would begin to help with all the static trhose little *******s produce!

 

I saw two 10-wheel dump trucks with tag axles this afternoon. Strange setup ... the tag axles were on long pivoting arms attached to the rear corners of the load boxes. When deployed they would have stuck out 6 to 8 feet beyond the back of the truck. Giant wheelie bars?

A lot of the larger readi-mix cement trucks out here have tag axles.

 

I think I've been "Hijacked"!!---This was about GAS TRANSPORTATION TRUCKS with chains dangling for grounding purposes.

 

I think the chains were to check your weight, with leaf spring trucks the ride height drops under load, if you set the chains to touch the ground when you had legal weight your cool. Now you just look at your air gauge. 10-4?

 

I remember the static chains on fuel trucks, I think they disappeared during World War Two. The weight chains were used on logging trucks. If the truck was overloaded the chain would drag on the road. The driver would cut a link off so he wouldn't get busted for overweight. Once both the cops and the drivers figured this one out they stopped using them. I had a tag axle truck once. If you back over a curb it will lift the drive axle off the ground and you aren't going any where.

 

Just watched the movie "White Heat", with James Cagney and Virginia Mayo. In the movie a gas truck is used to pull a heist, and the chains are shown, dangling from the back of the trailer.

 

We had static chains on fuel trucks around here right up through the sixties. I aint THAT old!

 

That's for the "bridge formula" states in the west, lengthening the wheelbase allows more weight to be carried legally. Same reason some trailer dumps have short boxes on long trailers. You also see those arms on concrete mixers, looks like 2 wheels near the loading hopper when up.

I remember them here in PA in the 60s. May have been state by state regs. Some buses have static straps so the p***engers don't get zapped getting on or off. I remember seeing static grounding wands in the lanes at toll booths for the comfort of the toll takers, haven't seen them for quite a while.

 

Is there one on the back?

 

Some builders still install static straps on Propane tank trucks.