Oxy/Acet transport for refills

[jamesemery728]

When you take your tanks to get them refilled how do you keep them upright in your pickup truck? Keep them in the roll around cart strapped down or have you built some kind of other fixture to keep them upright?

 

[travisd]

Why do you have to keep them upright?

 

[nissan_crawler]

I lay them down and wrap a ratchet strap around each end of them going from one side of the bed to the other, so they don't roll. It might be excessive, but the welding shop back home had a car they bought from an insurance company just to drive a point home. The guy transported a cylinder in the trunk, cap came off, knocked the valve off. it looked like the thing was rolled down a cliff, the hit with a cruise missile.

Just looking at that car puckered my sphincter and gave me the shivers. They left the bloodstains in the car, too. He didn't make it. I have no issue going overboard on keeping them where they should be.

Also, if I ever rolled, I would prefer the cylinder wasn't flying around.

 

[Nolan]

Why do you have to keep them upright?

Because in a lot of places, they'll ticket the hell out of you if they are laying on their side during transport. Even if "MT".

 

[nissan_crawler]

Because in a lot of places, they'll ticket the hell out of you if they are laying on their side during transport. Even if "MT".

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I would like to see a law on this.

DOT guidelines state transporting a cylinder on it's side is a-ok.

 

[caper]

Not a big deal for oxy but the acetylene shouldn't be used right away if it was transported laying down.The acetone which usually resides in the bottom of the cyl gets stirred up and can be sent out through the regulator if not given time to settle to the bottom again.

 

[A_Pmech]

Not a big deal for oxy but the acetylene shouldn't be used right away if it was transported laying down.The acetone which usually resides in the bottom of the cyl gets stirred up and can be sent out through the regulator if not given time to settle to the bottom again.

Which on rare occasions makes a nice flare!

Not that I would know about this, of course...



I always transport cylinders on their side, end cap facing the BACK of the vehicle should I need to stop. Generally speaking, I just throw in a couple blocks of wood to keep them from rolling. None of the bulk cylinder transport racks I've seen offer a method to positively restrain the bottle from leaving the rack. They just rattle around in there, a couple ratchet straps keeping them in a group against one or two walls of the rack.

From my reading of pressure bottle certification tests and studies, I figure if the hit is hard enough to break off the valve cap, it's probably enough to rupture the bottle or upset the friction weld at the bottle cap. With that kind of a force, nothing short of a positive retention fixture in the middle of the truck bed would keep them restrained in that kind of a collision.

Edit:

What worries me MUCH more are older cylinders. In some cases, they have been proven to be brittle and failure of the bottle wall results in a LOT of shrapnel. A high pressure bottle should be relatively ductile, to prevent the generation of shrapnel if it fails. I'll see if I can dig up the report.

 

[Nolan]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I would like to see a law on this.

DOT guidelines state transporting a cylinder on it's side is a-ok.

State of Kansas DOT or US Govt DOT?

A friend of mine was ticketed a few years ago up in the NE part of the country. I want to say it was either Penn. or NY, when he went thru the truck scales with a duelly and a bumper pull trailer. The state was doing "random" safety checks.

Laying in the bed of his truck was an empty or close to empty O2 and acetylene cylinder. Both were capped. Both were on their sides. The fine was a couple of hundred dollars and they wouldn't let him leave the scale pull off until he had secured the cylinders to the legs of the headache rack in upright positions. They told him that the law even applied to scuba cylinders which contain plain old air.

I lease the largest cylinders I can so that I do not have to go thru the hassle of transporting them to swap them out very often.

 

[Nolan]

What worries me MUCH more are older cylinders. In some cases, they have been proven to be brittle and failure of the bottle wall results in a LOT of shrapnel. A high pressure bottle should be relatively ductile, to prevent the generation of shrapnel if it fails. I'll see if I can dig up the report.

I've looked at some of the O2 cylinder dates at my supplier. You probably wouldn't believe the number of cylinders out there still in daily use that were made in the 1920's and 1930's.

I've also seen a lot of "US" marked ones from the WWII years. War surplus I guess.

 

[A_Pmech]

I've looked at some of the O2 cylinder dates at my supplier. You probably wouldn't believe the number of cylinders out there still in daily use that were made in the 1920's and 1930's.

I've also seen a lot of "US" marked ones from the WWII years. War surplus I guess.

Occasionally the owner of the welding supply and I will go on a "cylinder hunt", looking for the oldest one. I had a Linde here a few weeks ago that still had an unboxed ******** on it. I should see what I have now...

I read in a paper on the history of the high pressure drawn cylinder that one of the main things we took from Germany at the end of the war were high pressure cylinders. Tens of thousands of them.

 

[travisd]

Laying in the bed of his truck was an empty or close to empty O2 and acetylene cylinder. Both were capped. Both were on their sides. The fine was a couple of hundred dollars and they wouldn't let him leave the scale pull off until he had secured the cylinders to the legs of the headache rack in upright positions. They told him that the law even applied to scuba cylinders which contain plain old air.

Were they secured there, or just laying loose in the bed?

Not a definitive source by any means, but Airgas seems to say that the DOT (Fed) requirement is that they be *secured*, but nothing about horizontal vs vertical.

Secure your cylinders. The Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations require that all compressed gas cylinders be secured from movement during transportation. Cylinders that can move can open accidentally, or roll off the vehicle into the path of oncoming traffic.

(from http://www.airgas.com/content/details.aspx?id=7000000000010 )

Local regs of course could certainly be different, and NY is certainly one place that's prone to making up their own laws it seems

 

[Nolan]

Occasionally the owner of the welding supply and I will go on a "cylinder hunt", looking for the oldest one. I had a Linde here a few weeks ago that still had an unboxed ******** on it. I should see what I have now...

I knew that in later years they overstamped them to look like a window. I never really thought of them as being "boxed". That would be the best description.

 

[Nolan]

Were they secured there, or just laying loose in the bed?

He didn't say, but I think that you probably just hit the nail squarely on the head.

>>SECURED<<

I always figured that since they made him secure them to the legs in the upright position that the position was key. Secure was the key. It is more likely that there wasn't any way to secure them in the bed of the truck except to the legs.

I'm don't think that I'll tempt fate though. I'll keep transporting them upright.

Thanks!

 

[jamesemery728]

I'm don't think that I'll tempt fate though. I'll keep transporting them upright.

Thanks![/QUOTE]

How do you keep them upright in a mid size pickup? Do you strap them somehow or have some kind of frame to keep them from moving around?

 

[e-tek]

Last year I layed them in the trunk of my Galaxie convertible - Cannox loaded them the same way. This year they rolled around in the back of my mini-van for a few days - both MT and full - liquid-air loaded them on their sides. Never seen - or heard locally - of one going off. Only seen it on vids.

 

[Nolan]

How do you keep them upright in a mid size pickup? Do you strap them somehow or have some kind of frame to keep them from moving around?

I have a utility trailer with an stiff leg that fits in one corner. It's primary use is for transporting drums of diesel fuel home for the tractor.

I just had a thought. I also have a portable set of torches using an MC sized gas and I think it's a 20cf O2 cylinder. I usually just set them in a plastic milk carton in the bed of the pickup when I take them somewhere. Upright, but not secured. I guess that I need to come up with something.

As the economy continues to crumble, I suspect that we'll all see more and more "creative revenuing" at the state and local levels in the form of motor vehicle tickets for anything that they can get away with.

 

[Hiball]

I fairly sure here in Misery i was instructed that they had to be in the upright position with a properly attached end cap. Im fairly sure there is a DOT instructions referencing the same law in my suppliers business also and i know for a fact they will not load them in the down position. I transport mine using the roll cart and strap them against the cab side of the bed.

 

[nissan_crawler]

State of Kansas DOT or US Govt DOT?

A friend of mine was ticketed a few years ago up in the NE part of the country. I want to say it was either Penn. or NY, when he went thru the truck scales with a duelly and a bumper pull trailer. The state was doing "random" safety checks.

Laying in the bed of his truck was an empty or close to empty O2 and acetylene cylinder. Both were capped. Both were on their sides. The fine was a couple of hundred dollars and they wouldn't let him leave the scale pull off until he had secured the cylinders to the legs of the headache rack in upright positions. They told him that the law even applied to scuba cylinders which contain plain old air.

I lease the largest cylinders I can so that I do not have to go thru the hassle of transporting them to swap them out very often.

$5 says your friend had them rolling around, which is a HUGE no-no. I reported somebody for that. I nearly shat myself when i saw them flying around his flatbed (had 6" sides on it).

As for loading/not loading...in the 4 states I've been in, not one company I've used has ever loaded them into your vehicle, period. They get rolled onto the dock, after that, what you do is your business.

Yes, as stated acetylene cylinders have to be left alone after moving in the horizontal position. FWIW, not one company has ever said anything about me transporting them horizontally.

Our farm truck was stopped several times for dot inspections, and the cylinders were mostly horizontal in it, they never batted an eye.

 

[toymn6366]

in georgia they had better be caped you will get a ticket. my granpa's oxy cylinder that i had slide out of his pickup when i was 16 is still in his barn i think, just lucky no one was behind me man that thing took off like a rocket.