Ahoy! old salts, this is a very specific question but,
Has anyone discharged a large quantity of Palm Oil or any other liquid cargo to trucks from a ship? Any information is helpful, color of trucks how many wheels are on the truck ect…
Fair Winds and Following Sea
Jeff
Yes, Tallow and fish oil, and have seen Palm oil operations in West Africa other ships.
Receiving or loading it has wide variances. The ships responsibility most cases starts and ends with the hose connection . Cargo arranges for transport to load berth or receiving. May be shoreside tanks, barges, rail cars or trucks. Generally small parcels deep tank cargo from a break bulk ship receivers use third party carriers, don’t own the equipment. Type same entire cargo. What it looks like could be anything.
Parcel tanker same except probably unusual to discharge into small capacity equipment. Shoreside tanks or tank barge more likely.
FAME Discharging in Carboneras, Spain:
One 6"-Hose connected to ship’s manifold. A distributor manifold on shore can connect to up to six trucks at once. Each truck carries about 50 cbm. Vessel will keep a constant rate of about 300-400 cbm/h and the trucks will be exchanged one by one by shutting of the valve on the distributor ashore.
The trailers are 12-wheelers (three double axis), the trucks have six wheels.
Coming from someone in the engine department, I recall discharging tallow in Pusan from a Lykes ship to trucks in 1979. One hose from the discharge station to a “Y”, and up to two tank trailers at a time. You want some detail? I recall coming back to the ship in the morning, and seeing the deck watch mucking tallow from the main deck and bulkheads. Seems that both valves on the “Y” were closed before shutting down the discharge pump and the hose blew. In 87, I also recall discharging quite a bit of soybean oil to tank trucks in Guayaquil. One hose operation. No problems encountered.
Photo shows it all. Way back American Export and Farrell loaded deep tanks often. West Africa used to see the Firestone ships, Harbel Tapper & Harbel Cutlass, both fitted for liquid latex in deep tanks.
These days never see a break bulk ship & it’s rare for a handy sized bulker to have cargo deep tanks. Container ships and Con Ro’s never. Lot of the small volume liquid bulk has gone to tank containers. And smaller parcel tankers that are more common than the old days.
Here’s a obscure detail. Had some big disputes with the specialist stevedore that delivered tallow alongside in rail cars & pumped aboard. Pier would be a slippery mess & dangerous for passengers (American Ex & Farrell 12 passengers ) as well as longshoremen. Accident it’s the vessel that gets sued
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I’ve pumped a bunch of slops to trucks over the years. They were typical tanker trunks, with not much capacity. It’s not a very efficient operation, and typically the ship pump is barely running, since I was discharging through a 4-6” hose. Nothing that special about it except that it just takes longer with a lot more stops & starts.
Just curious, how did they drain the hose between the distributor and truck?
No need. Put a valve on the end and there’s hardly anything to drain.
Never handled liquid cargo, eh?
Whose hose is it?
Nope. Not a drop.
I honestly don’t recall, as this was already a few years back and I was in charge of the shipside operation only. Hoses and distributor were provided by shore. As the hoses connected to the trucks were somewhat shorter and smaller diameter (2 inch maybe), remains coud have been easily contained in a drum. Forgot the details, though…
Thanks, it just looks like it has the potential for some really slippery messes!
Not vegetable oil and not discharging:
Photo: Arne Enholm (Master M/T Proof Gallant at the time)
Chemical and product tanker “Proof Gallant” Blt. 1980 for Winterport Shipping NL/J.O.Odfjell
The ship is taking a gulp of 672.848 liters of Grants finest in port Ayr Scotland for US Ports.
For those not familiar with Grants Finest: Grant's Finest Scotch Whisky - Ratings and reviews - Whiskybase
PS> Tank stripping was popular among job the crew. (No, not because of OT)
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Mess is a product of sloppy work from the stevedore, not uncommon.
Palm Oil loading 2nd hand information, friend of mine went to work for Unilever out of university. After training his first assignment was Palm Oil terminal manager in a small Nigerian river port. Quantity on hand built up he cabled London & they scheduled a Palm Line vessel to load. Oil was put up in cask & loaded break bulk.
Business changed he left and went to work as a independent agent for Scandinavian owner. Always a West African Specialist his advice was worth taking.
The HARBEL CUTLASS. Haven’t heard about that ship for quite a long time. The first ship I surveyed (for annual class and statutory) as a budding ABS Surveyor in 1988. . . .
Only know them 2nd hand they were members of the America West Africa Freight conference when I worked for Barber West Africa Line & saw them in various ports. Barber Ship Management proposed a life extension program for the vessels early 2000’s, believe they went through with it under a different manager
Just looked them up ones been scraped other still operating under a different name and owner East Africa. Thought they were pretty nice ships compared to what you saw those trades.
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Thank you all for your input!
Not entirely wrong, You can run a hose to a stinger with a ball valve attached for top loading and keep the hose full between trucks, Or I believe there is some sort of standard truck connection with a valve that I can’t find a picture of at the moment. At the end you can either shoot a PIG or walk it back like a firehose.
Barge to truck is done all the time in South Texas with ULSD. It is a pretty simple efficient method especially if you have a small surge tank available that allows the barge to pump constantly even when the truck rotations slow down. Clearing the hose isn’t a issue as someone above said. You will block in at the shore manifold and blow the cargo hose back to the barge. The shore side you eventually will blow to a truck if you need to clear that line / manifold but it is usually left packed.