Fuel Tanker Convoy

[Elwenil]

We get a few convoys moving through the area but I don't think I've ever seen this many all parked in one place here locally. Word is they pulled in about 8AM Saturday and more kept coming in until they filled this one section of a local plaza parking lot. These were taken about 2AM Sunday morning as I rode through to check them out. Didn't get too close as there was at least one guard on duty watching the trucks. Lots of Freightliner road tractors with what look like small sleepers which I don't think I have seen before, at least one HEMTT (I assume a M97, two 900 series cargo trucks, at least one uparmored HMMWV and a lot of fuel tank trailers. The tankers looked to be 2 rows deep plus a lot of tractors bobtailing parked in front. In the first pic you can see the tankers and some of the bobtailing tractors, a few more are to the left of the pic behind a building, the HMMWV can be seen between bobtailer 1 and 2 and part of the M978 can be seen between 2 and 3. In pic 2 you can see the HMMWV and M978 better as I moved down the line to the last of the bobtails and looked back. You can see the two 900 series cargo trucks, one with trailer between the last two bobtail tractors.

Is there a particular M number for the tractors with a sleeper or is that just an addition to an existing truck?

 

[Stonepicker1]

"Freightliner road tractors with what look like small sleepers

M915A5

 

[Elwenil]

Ah, I see. Thanks. I think a few had that front end but others still had the "normal" civilian looking headlamps. Perhaps they were upgraded and the headlamps/hood was not changed?

 

[srodocker]

thats awesome!

 

[bulldog_mack13]

Western Star , not Freightliners. Seems the Military has Frieghtliners, IH's , and Western Stars for the line haul series trucks.

 

[joeM62]

You can't miss that big W on the front hood, wonder why so many in a civialin parking lot.

 

[kennys@wi.rr.com]

Appears to be a large scale troop/material movement exercise. Could the use f a civilian parking lot aid in the "real world" training of possible events they may encounter?

 

[CW3Topher]

More like a Reserve or National Guard unit on their way for Annual Training. This time of June is when we would always go. When I was in a fuel unit we would attend what is called a Pollex (sp?). We would travel to base, set up in the field and haul fuel from a depot to a bag farm, then on the second week, return the unused fuel from the bag farm back to a depot. The vast majority of fuel haulers are Reserve and Guard units. In Iraq we outnumbered the Active Duty units 4 to 1.

 

[gimpyrobb]

I saw about 70 of those tractors with flat beds behind them headed south on I71 on Friday. They certainly look impressive driving down the road.

 

[papabear]

I suspect they were headed south to refuel CARNAC's fleet!

 

[Stonepicker1]

More like a Reserve or National Guard unit on their way for Annual Training. This time of June is when we would always go. When I was in a fuel unit we would attend what is called a Pollex (sp?). We would travel to base, set up in the field and haul fuel from a depot to a bag farm, then on the second week, return the unused fuel from the bag farm back to a depot. The vast majority of fuel haulers are Reserve and Guard units. In Iraq we outnumbered the Active Duty units 4 to 1.

 

[Elwenil]

Yeah, the girls at the McDonalds about 200' away said they told them they were on their way to Ohio for training. Didn't get a look at the front of the bobtailed trucks but there were definitely Freightliners in the two rows with the tank trailers attached. Some were woodland, some desert tan. All the bobtails were desert tan. I wonder if they were sleeping in the trucks? They were not idling and it was pretty **** hot here last night so I pity them if they were. There are at least 4 motels within a block or two of the plaza and the McD's girls said they were shuttling soldiers around to the stores in a HMMWV so I suppose they may have all shacked up in one of the motels.

 

[wreckerman893]

The bobtails are in case a tractor goes down...they can swap them out and keep trucking.

The wrecker snags the breakdown and pulls it to the next maint stop.

 

[bulldog_mack13]

A mix of any of the makes of trucks would be normal.

 

[Ferroequinologist]

I wonder if those tankers are 5k or bigger? Cool trucks, maybe I'll buy one in 20yrs when they surplus them.

 

[Danger Ranger]

Western star is famous for their "curved-wall-look". I don't know much about their mil models, but maybe they have the same style as the civi ones? The bobtailers in the pics look like them.

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

I suspect they were headed south to refuel CARNAC's fleet!

PB,
Are you sure about that ?

Scuttle-Butt has is that they were, in fact, headed to Wreckerman's Compound NOT to fuel HIS fleet, but to PICK-UP some "Special-SECRET-Recipe" Fuel FROM WM's Wood Burning REFINERY

 

[gunboy1656]

Nice looking convoy, wish I could have seen them in person.

Only time we stayed in a truck stop overnight was when we headed down to help after hurricane Katrina. There were not a lot of happy truck drivers that trip. Each night while on the move the state police would move ahead of us and make every truck driver leave. If they were not in their trucks the troopers got them out of where ever they were it did not make a difference.

When we would do our annual training and it needed an over night stop we usually hit a local armory on our way and stayed there. but this convoy is just a little bit bigger then what we ran.

 

[big1096]

I saw a large convoy of the same make up on Sunday morning heading SW from the Baltimore area. There were some sweet Oshkosh units in there!

 

[Elwenil]

Yeah, I was sort of surprised at the size of this convoy. Since they seemed to trickle in all day from early in the morning I thought maybe they were two separate convoys that linked up but there didn't seem to be enough support trucks. I was looking for a wrecker in the bunch but was not able to see one. Perhaps one did break down and the wrecker was off towing and it got the convoy strung out a bit? I was able to see the whole group form all sides as they were parked in a corner of the lot where our old LJS used to be and the road leading to the mall and the entrance curve down off the hill behind the trucks in the pics. You can sort of see the guardrail int he background of the second pic. I noticed the sleepers had that odd curved look to them like Western Star and Ford tractors do but the Freightliner trucks also had the same sleeper on them. I wouldn't swear to it since it was 2AM and I was trying to look while driving but I could have sworn one of the Freightliner's was painted 3 color NATO but had a tan sleeper. It was one of the first ones I saw in the very back far right of the first pic in the dark and at first I thought it was just some of those container boxes that are normally found on the front of some of the expansible van trailers but after looking at the others they all seemed to have sleepers. Either way a group this large was too much for me to not ride by and snap a couple pics on my phone at least but the whole sleeper thing I was not really expecting to see.