April has been a busy month. As I turned the corner to come into our MAF dock location earlier this month, this was the challenge awaiting me. Our fuel shipment of 5,000+ gallons of AvGas had arrived in remarkable fashion. While the truck backed into the driveway at 6am, the sidewall collapsed and over it went, including our liquid gold.
Thankfully, no one got hurt; but we had a potentially VERY dangerous situation on our hands. How to salvage our AvGas quickly and safely, while also planning on getting the truck and tank out of the swamp.
We rigged up a makeshift pneumatic pump to begin draining the tank into 55 gallon fuel drums. The process worked well, but it was slow. It took over 11 hours to pump the tank dry.
Thankfully, I work with an amazing team of very talented and ingenious men. With a lot of teamwork, a Caterpillar excavator, and lots of sweat, we had the tank sitting back on top of the truck and they drove off about 36 hours after first arriving. Normally the process takes less than three hours to offload the fuel. Now, we still have a huge hole to repair in our driveway, but that will get addressed when the dry season comes in a few more months.
