Operators find good pay, a less taxing workload and a professional attitude in this steady niche.

Tank owner-operators believe theirs is the best specialty. Most say they couldn’t earn elsewhere what they make on the typically fewer miles they run in liquid bulk. The physical workload isn’t too demanding.

“You’re not backing up to docks – you don’t have to physically move your own freight,” says Eric Hanson, recruiting manager with Jackson, Miss.-based Miller Transporters, which hauls chemicals nationwide. “It’s very scheduled in terms of pickups and deliveries – very rarely will they have to load and unload something by themselves.”

And even if you do, says operator Steven “Buck” Landry, hauling for FAS Environmental Services of Pierre Part, La., the physical work usually involves nothing more than “hooking hoses.”

The work can be solitary. Landry often vacuums excess fluid from injection wells in Louisiana and Texas and hauls it away for disposal. “There isn’t a soul around most of these wells,” he says. If you’re delivering to a union plant, “nobody wants to be around when you’re unloading,” given potential liability for a spill.

Rather, the truck stop perception – that tanking is dangerous, difficult, not for the faint of heart – is often simply not true. Operators in the niche find a professionalism uncommon in other applications and, when rates are as good as they are today, the possibility of making a very good living.

Pay and other perks