Driving a pickup with a big tank full of liquid

I will have to put a tank in my pickup, I estimate 170 gallons, and it may be full of liquid.

My question is how dangerous is it to drive with such a tank, as far as liquid sloshing inside is concerned. It would seem to negatively impact stability of the vehicle.

Has anyone ever driven a vehicle with a similarly sized tank in the back?

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Reply to
Ignoramus18200
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Full.... no problem if the truck can handle the weight.

Empty... no problem

Half full... could be a big problem if no baffles. Brake way, way, way earlier and at a slower rate. Same for acceleration. Accelerate slowly. For turns slow way ahead, and wait until fully straightened out before accelerating. Slow at 3-4 times the distances as you would normally start braking. Keep the tank as low as possible. In the bed not as big a deal as if its up on a stand.

You need to THINK about your driving while you are hauling liquids in a single tank.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

If it's water based, wait for it to get cold enough to freeze it, and then you won't have the sloshing problem.

Reply to
JohnB

Please explain how liquid might slosh in a full tank.

John Martin

Reply to
John Martin

I wouldn't worry about it much at all. They make 500 gallon poly tanks that are designed to sit in a pickup bed and are commonly used for construction and agricultural applications. These tanks do not have baffles in them and you don't see all the trucks carrying them upside down in ditches.

Reply to
Pete C.
500 gal of water is 4,170 lbs, a scooch over 2 tons. 500 gal gas, about 3,060 500 gal diesel about 3,500 Those are some pickups... JR Dweller in the cellar

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Reply to
JR North

Do it all the time. 170 gallons of water will be about 1,400 pounds. On a 3/4 tone you will have all you want PLUS. You want to haul it FULL or empty. Anything in between and you will have problems. Sloshing causes MAJOR problems.

Reply to
Steve W.

I have a little experience hauling liquid as I used to drive a milk tanker.

With that rig the biggest danger was when the tank was half full. We had a guy swerve to miss a dog on a flat and level country road and rolled the truck.

With your tank as others have mentioned the more head space you have the worse the kinetic forces are going to be. You also have to be concerned this time of year with slick roads, especially at intersections.

You can come to a stop and then the slosh will cause you to slide, so if you can wait for a day when the roads are dry that might be a good idea.

The up side to your plan is that you only have 170 gallons so you will probably be OK if you don't make any radical turns or quick stops.

Reply to
Roger Shoaf

Some decades ago. the Air Force had some problems with their new B-52s, and the new engines they put in them. Seems airplanes were "randomly" falling out of the sky. Turns out to be only under some conditions: namely, when half full of fuel, during touch and go exercises. When the throttles were pushed to the max, the new engines spooled up faster causing fuel to slosh back, then forward, then back

- moving the center of gravity faster than the pilots could react before "premature termination of flight operations at the air ground interface". The quick fix solution was to put a 'stop' at the old power settings, to keep pilots from adding too much throttle. Eventually, they changed/improved the tank baffles.

- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

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pyotr filipivich

Reply to
Steve

350/3500 series DRW an up handle them just fine. The "1 Ton" isn't 1 Ton any more, they are quite a bit more.
Reply to
Pete C.

These balls will reduce sloshing at the cost of a bit of capacity, not sure what they cost:

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...maybe you can get a deal on a bunch of wiffle balls!

I seek the basic tanks are not very expensive:

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I wouldn't want 100+ gallons of water sloshing around on a snowy or icy road... of course milk trucks have no option-- adding baffles makes them into a butter churn.

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Yep. I hauled a load of landscape stones a few years ago in my '96 F350 single-track. Then we hit a few garage sales on the way home. Later calculated the load at 3750 lbs. Could have easily hauled more if the tires could handle it

Reply to
RBnDFW

On Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:33:43 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus18200 scrawled the following:

It does. That's 170 x 8.345404 pounds (water) or 1419 pounds, roughly

3/4 of a ton of goosey, movable cargo.

Drive slowly and carefully, especially if it's not full. Half-full tanks can slosh a lot more and tip you more easily if you're not ready for it. Liquid is a lot harder to predict than solid cargo. I've experienced that from occasionally moving barrels and tanks of liquid via hand trucks.

How far are you going, and in what traffic situations? I suggest slow driving and keeping your emergency flashers on for the duration if you have any traffic at all.

No, I think 50 gallons or so is my current record.

I've seen hot-tub-equipped limos driving down the street in Vegas before. Examples:

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. imagine having to slam on your brakes and sending 400 gallons of water + your clients over the roof and into the intersection!

-- To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Reply to
Larry Jaques

On Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:53:49 -0800 (PST), the infamous John Martin scrawled the following:

Iggy used the word "may". "May" = "slosh", right?

-- To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Reply to
Larry Jaques

What he said.

Now, what I said: Go to your local fire hall, and pose the question to the tanker driver. He'll likely tell you the same thing.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

That's cause they are teleported to area 55 in Rosewell NM with the little green men.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

How about if you finish the paint job and it's full tone?

Yes, sloshing and load shifting is very serious.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Half full: 722 pounds, say moving at 1 Hz. Say it sloshes one foot high, and that 10% of the mass is in that slosh. 72 pound, one foot hit, is only 72 foot-pounds of energy. But at 1 Hz, it's a 72 pound dumbell on a 1 foot radius, or 210 foot-pounds/sec^2. At 2 Hz, not an unreasonable guess, it becomes 840 foot-pounds/sec^2 or ... how many HP is that? Where do the slugs go? This could easily slosh at 10 Hz with the little we know and 21,000 foot-pounds/sec^2 is just a frightenly huge number, even though I know I have the units wrong and it's all back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Can you imagine a 72 pound iron casting with a two inch milling bit jammed in it, on a milling machine table, swinging out of control, at

600 rpm, which is 10 Hz? I'd scat my pants before I scat outta there. It would rip a 20 HP mill out of its foundations. That's what a 72 pound dumbell on a 1 foot radius is. It's ... scary.

Somewhere betwen 1 and 10 Hz there's going to be a truck suspension resonance.

722 lbf @ 32 ft/sec^2 is about 22 slugs.

Whatever is in there, it had better be full, or emptied, like the others said. That's what I'm thinkin'.

Douglas (Dana) Goncz Replikon Research Seven Corners, VA 22044-0394

"Use paper for the math, or plan on throwing away the first part made"

Reply to
The Dougster

I've driven a Chevy 3500 flatbed with a 200 gallon tank, no baffles, around town in snow and ice but not exceeding about 50 mph. Drove it from full to empty, the sloshing was never a big deal, although I can't guarantee that the right combination of conditions might not cause a problem. It was this type of rig:

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Reply to
ATP*

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