Article

Tipping point

Bobtail rollover frequency concerns prompt push for new training remedies

Data from the largest fleets suggests a nagging problem with bobtail rollovers. (Photo courtesy of Heritage Propane)

Safety leaders at the nation’s largest propane retailer companies are concerned about the frequency of low-speed bobtail rollovers that are costing the industry millions of dollars annually while risking driver and public safety.

Officials at the three largest retailers have raised a call to create and fund better driver awareness and training nationwide. Work on the project is under way and could be done as early as year’s end.

Beyond expensive truck repair bills, rollovers raise premiums for medical, worker’s compensation and fleet insurance and cost companies untold dollars in lost employee and vehicle service time. If the tank breaches and releases propane, there also can be costs for emergency responders and lost product.

Nobody tracks the number of rollovers among the estimated 35,000 bobtails that crisscross the nation’s roads daily. But data from the largest fleets suggests a nagging problem that is not improving with standard awareness and training efforts by each company.

AmeriGas, Ferrellgas and Heritage Propane, which run almost 6,300 bobtails (18 percent of the industry total), each averages 12-20 rollovers per year, says Paul Grady, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Heritage.

“That’s statistically representative of 120-150 rollovers a year across our industry. That’s $15 million worth of equipment plus risk to employee injury,” Grady said in April as he urged the Propane Education & Research Council to devise an industry-wide solution.

PERC’s Safety and Training Advisory Committee (STAC) already met last month to begin examining the issue that some safety officials consider a quiet “epidemic.” But the lack of incident data from the thousands of independent propane marketers makes that speculation virtually impossible to verify.

“We really don’t know how pervasive rollovers are,” admits Stuart Flatow, PERC’s vice president of safety and training who works with STAC. “I do know that the tanks almost never leak when there is an accident. In terms of what it costs in dollars for driver injuries, it’s a big deal.”

He said STAC could solicit incident data from National Propane Gas Association’s Benchmarking Council groups, insurance carriers and attorneys to help measure the outcomes of any safety program it provides.

In 2006, researchers at the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University reported their findings after studying all types of propane accidents from 1998 through 2000 and identifying their causes. It cited data from more than a dozen federal and state agencies, independent groups and news reports in counting the number of incidents, injuries and fatalities and identifying their causes.

The study showed 71 incidents of overturned vehicles resulting in 30 injuries and one fatality. Rollovers rated the highest contributing factor for propane transport incidents, and second highest (to collisions) in number of injuries.

But that study lumped incidents involving bobtails, transports and cylinder/service vehicles because it was often unclear from safety reports which type of vehicle was involved.

One is too many
No matter the exact numbers, a 28,000-pound, fully loaded bobtail crashing on its side poses a frightening danger to anyone in the vicinity.

“As far as I can tell, the numbers haven’t changed. We’re having way too many of them,” says John Wright, director of safety and technology at AmeriGas.

“Rollovers are very, very dangerous. They can kill our employees as well as endanger the general public. I think we, as an industry, should look at this and do everything we can to prevent them. Our goal is zero. We shouldn’t have any rollovers. We certainly can do a heck of a lot better than we are doing now.”

STAC Chairman Eric Kuster agrees that the task can’t wait for time-consuming research to quantify the problem.

“Even if we roll just one bobtail – and the frequency obviously is more than that – it’s an issue. Whether we do research on the frequency is something the task force will flush out. But this is a project we definitely will try to move on as quickly as we can,” says Kuster, a loss control specialist with Fairmont Specialty insurance.

A heavy bobtail’s high center of gravity, relatively short wheel base and shifting liquid cargo can be a dangerous combination at speeds as low as 5 mph. Trucks navigating steep banks, ditches and soft road shoulders are at particular risk to end up on their sides.

Safety officials say rollovers most commonly happen when the passenger-side wheels leave the pavement, sometimes dropping several inches. The skewed load balance is further aggravated as the driver tries to regain the pavement by quickly pulling the wheel left. That drastic compensation causes the heavy liquid cargo to slosh hard against the tank barrel.

“How do we get drivers programmed to not jerk the wheel and overcorrect when their wheels go off road? It’s a normal response to get back on. It’s the same as driving your personal car. But with the propane load, if you do your fate is already set; you cannot stop it,” Wright explains.

Because of those dynamics, each of the major propane companies has had an educational program instructing their drivers to fight the urge to pull back onto the pavement. Instead, they are instructed to stay off on the shoulder and slow down until they can safely return to the roadway.

But the three largest marketers all admit their rollover numbers are not declining. Representatives from Inergy and Suburban Propane declined requests for interviews.

After noticing a rash of rollovers one year ago, Heritage Propane analyzed 50 similar incidents looking to identify a trend or common reason such as driver age, experience, geography or time of year. Concluding it could be driver distraction from cell phone use, the company implemented a policy requiring hands-free phones.

But the rollovers continued at a rate of 6-12 per year with an average repair bill of $40,000, Grady says.

He broached the issue with his colleagues at AmeriGas and Ferrellgas this spring and the big picture started getting clearer.

“The issue really is just about the physics of the bobtail, which is top-heavy,” Grady says. “If it gets two tires off by four or five inches it could be as much as a foot at the top of the barrel. With the physics involved pulling that truck back onto the road, you are at a high risk of laying that vehicle down.”

Danny McElroy, executive vice president and general manager for White River Distributors’ Southwest sales center in Dallas, confirms that the evolution of the bobtail design has compounded the physics issues.

Standard truck barrels used to be 72 inches in diameter and hold 2,600 or 2,800 gallons of fuel. Today’s bigger tanks can hold 3,000 to 3,499 gallons. Marketers prefer to use the taller, 79.9-inch diameter barrel to enable them to use a shorter wheelbase that has a tighter turning radius, McElroy says.

“I think this probably is an issue that a lot of marketers are not aware of. But when you see in the context of a fleet of 1,700 bobtails, you can see a trend. Where [majors] can see a trend, it may never occur to the smaller dealers,” Grady says.

Training to remedy cause
A recent study for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration concluded that the large majority of cargo tank rollovers are caused at least in part by human error – vehicle operators perform or fail to perform actions that result in vehicle instability and then roll over.

It said much of the current operator training to prevent rollovers tends to be either informational (the effects of fatigue, the physics of rollovers) or motivational (stay alert and pay attention). It found little evidence of specific behavioral training of operators to prevent rollovers.

The safety leaders interviewed for this story all agreed that specialized training for driving bobtails is the primary – though not exclusive – tool needed for reducing rollover accidents.

Randy Warner, vice president of safety for Ferrellgas and a member of STAC, believes the physics of the bobtail and the circumstances under which propane drivers perform make it unique from other cargo vehicles.

“We know that we have a unique vehicle and situations with bobtails. There’s no training or study out there that is specific to the bobtail – just general cargo trucks,” he says. “Regardless of what the numbers say for the industry, there is a need for specific training on bobtail rollovers that we can’t get anywhere else.”

That’s particularly true now that lessons can include computer animation to show drivers exactly what happens to the liquid cargo at the point of braking and hard turns.

“Animation allows us to illustrate to the learner exactly what is happening in that bobtail and some of the challenges they face,” says Kuster, who used to drive bobtails for Ferrellgas.

“It’s something we could never do unless we actually rolled a bobtail. It really brings our training program to the next level. It benefits the employees because they better understand what is going on. It gives them the tools to make better decisions when they are out in the field.”

Too many drivers get their first exposure to a rollover scenario when their truck’s tires go off into a ditch.

“Until you are in that truck and can feel what is happening, you learn the hard way,” Kuster explains. “That’s not what we want to be happening.”

Flatow, who has overseen similar animation used in industry training on cathodic tank protection and consumer safety, sees this as a good fit for the technology.

“I can see a training program using real bobtail drivers narrating an animated video of a rollover. The takeaway is that you really feel it,” he says. “I think it’s a program that will be embraced by the industry.”

Wright, who has been in the propane industry just two years, says drivers need all of the help available to do a tough job in the worst of conditions.

“I know it’s a challenge driving these big trucks because often the icy roads are not much bigger than the truck and there’s not much space to spare. One split second and your wheels are off the pavement,” he says.

“The positive thing with this is if we look at the problem as an industry, we’ve got a lot of smart people focusing on it and committed to make a difference. I am sure we will have a good impact.”