How about this:
Before dawn on my day off, I got a call from a fleet driver complaining that they couldn’t refuel a van (Ford Transit) and that my credit card was locked. They have already spent their $100 limit on the card and the jar is still empty. They tried to refuel, hit the limit and now the credit card is locked. The driver is now trying to fill up with gas with their personal credit card (why? – and yes, I refunded the driver because then they were only getting $10/hour and the gas was $4.00) .50 dollars). In the background at that moment, I heard a waiter start screaming and the emergency shutdown system was pressed. Thirty minutes later, I was “on and off” at the scene where a driver pumped more than 60 gallons of fuel into the ground. The ramp is just away from the pump so drivers won’t notice when they’re in the car while it pumps to the ground. In about 20 minutes of a gas spill, I have about 10+ months of work ahead of me.
In the parking lot, it looks like someone cut the fuel filler hose (rubber) from the fuel tank to the gas tank to steal gas. However, my vehicles are stored in empty containers at the end of the day. Refueling in the morning is very important.
Why “terrible” and headache?
1. Drivers did not do a safety check before their shift. Apparently gasoline spilled around if they didn’t look down. I had to do additional training for the per-trip and refueling inspection requirements.
2. The driver is in the cabin, the vehicle is running while pumping fuel to the ground. Luckily, we didn’t run into bigger, more explosive problems. A “near-miss” EHS/OSHA training/summary must be conducted.
3. As a result I lost a car for about a week of no use (Having one in four trucks break down in 3 on, 1 off turns is a problem for particularly small car revs) . But really, it’s halved in almost a year. Because “the state” requires a crime estimating and reporting process to “install” a “fix” worth tens of dollars or more. BUY MY PITA. And because it’s a “gubbermint” fleet:
4. I’ve been fighting for over 10 months with the auditors over $400 in gas bills that need to be recorded because the “state” tracks mileage and fuel usage, if they don’t. Audit. You took your car, swiped your card, inter-pass ID number, entered mileage, etc. I had to keep both the receipt for every gas and even with the police report, had to deal with some parts. of the system continually shuts down the vehicle’s fuel because some systems flagged the mileage as “incorrect”. It’s been a long battle because every 2-3 days a driver is banned from refueling. I would need to ground the vehicle every other day to try to scramble for fuel just to see if the vehicle would be available the NEXT day (again, our vehicle was “dry”).
4b. Not only that, because of the “problem” account I had to check all my vehicles almost monthly…for all 20-70ish vehicles (three different groups). Do you think someone using a motorized pool would step inside if they didn’t get a receipt from the pump? River!
Elected officials can cheat and cut deals with friends all day, but God, I’d be so merciful if the guy on that fleet had a fuel line to a parked car criminally and poured gasoline on the ground.
My worst gas station experience didn’t even happen when I was at the gas station on my day off – that left me going to the gas station every other day for 10 months. Sigh.
