[Mack184]

I spent 37 years in broadcasting, however over those years I have often supplemented my income by driving gasoline tankers on the weekends. The average tanker is going to haul approximately 8,500 gallons of fuel divided up in 4-5 compartments. A standard load is often 7,000 of regular & 1,500 gallons of mid-grade. If the station has blender-pumps, then the 1,500 gallons of mid is swapped for 1,500 gallons of premium.

Your local gas station/convenience store's underground fuel tanks usually hold 10-12,000 gallons of regular & 6,000 gallons of mid grade & 6,000 of premium. If the station has blender pumps, then there is no mid-grade tank and the premium tank is usually an 8 or 10,000 gallon tank.

If you have been at your local gas station when a tanker is unloading, you can see that they take up a lot of room. Now look at the NYC & NJ stations that are fully clogged with cars, with lines extending miles up the street. How's the tanker going to get in? And...with the mobs at these stations, I would NOT want to be the driver who's bringing in that load trying to navigate around cars who won't give an inch to you to bring in the load in the first place. Plus I wouldn't want to be the guy who was getting out of that tanker and trying to keep people from trying to get the load right out of your truck for you.

IMHO what should have been done, was to close all the gas stations for 2-3 days. No gas to anybody..no lines allowed. Then the trucks could have gotten in, gotten the tanks filled and then put in rationing for a week or so, and things would have gotten back in shape.

One other note, in areas that flooded, it is very likely that whatever was in the tanks was to at least some point contaminated by water, so that the tanks would have to be pumped out and then refilled with clean fuel before they could resume service.