I’m no expert, but I did pull a tanker for about a month, back in the mid 90’s. It was a srartup operation, two partners. One was a guy, mid 40’s, who’s father owned a large dairy farm im Wa. and also owned a small tanker fleet to haul the milk for his and other local dairies. The son had been running the tankers for his dad until they had a falling out and sonny decided to start his own tanker co. The other partner was a freight broker out of so. Ca. Apparently these two had known each other for several year and had some dealings in the trucking business. Sonny turned out to be all big ideas, but not much business sense, which the partner and I found out the hard way. I had a signed contract for $xx dollars per mile, loaded or empty, which I eventually collected from the partner. Sonny left him holding the bag. I didn’t get too deep into it, but apparently at the time the state/federal regs. governing tankers was pretty loose. It seemed to pretty much regulated by the shippers and whether they would load their product on your truck. I’m sure there were pretty strict regs. on dangerous chemicals, but that still leaves a lot of room for abuse. On one run I hauled a load of used motor oil into SLC and then, after a half assed washout, hauled a load to tallow. Now tallow is pretty nasty stuff, but much of it was used by the fast food industry, in their deep fat friers.
I think there was a big shakeup in the late 90’s and they’ve tightened up the cross contamination issue a lot.
What? By not carrying an empty load on the return trip of course! A guy drives from NYC to rural PA with a load of GooGunk™. After unloading and a minimal wash he picks up a load of milk for the return to NYC. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Note that the newspaper articles I read concerned longer haul shipping. The short trip stuff from farm to dairy is a whole 'nother thing. Dairies do indeed test the milk after it comes in from a farm, but that doesn’t matter when it gets shipped out. Will every factory of Mom’s Milk Biscuits™ chain test each batch that comes in, especially if there’s a wink-wink discount on shipping?
Not everyone agrees. Both Snopes and Car Talk say that it will clog filters but that’s about all, and will not be especially hard to clean up.
Do you have links to any articles about someone carrying milk and anything else on the same truck? I’ve been looking on the free newspaper archive sites and haven’t found any instances of this so far.
From my experience in the food industry, food manufacturers are very concerned with the transportation of bulk materials because the negative PR and recall costs from even a relatively inconsequential contamination issue can be devastating.
Typical for the industries I’ve seen (not milk), before loading a tanker or hopper, the operators are to collect documentation of internal cleaning (maybe this was a receipt from a place that does the cleaning) if the cleaning wasn’t done on-site, an inspection of the truck’s paperwork to see what had been hauled in the truck the last load (or few loads), and a physical inspection of the innards. I’d been told of a couple cases where the previous load had been found to be incompatible with food, so the truck was rejected and the hauler removed from the list of approved companies.
None of which is foolproof, of course.
In my experience, yes they will.
Food producers are generally required (either by law or contract obligation) to be able to trace their products in both directions. That means they can tell where a particular stick of butter was bought and from which farm the milk came.
I don’t understand. What does this have to do with testing an incoming shipment from a dairy?
Thank you, ** E K**. I had prowled around the DOT site a while back because I wondered what code “1803” was. I didn’t find anything there that was useful, but I didn’t know the numbers were from the UN. Now I know it’s Phenolsulfonic acid, liquid (whatever that is).
I live about five miles north of a big bunch of dairy farms – a light breeze from the south is occasionally redolent of cow. I work just two blocks from the Arizona Dairymen Association processing plant. Every day when I go back and forth I’m dodging milk semi-trailer tanks. When they’re going back to the farm they go like a bat outta hell so I doubt they’re hauling anything in the tank. I’ve never noticed any placards nor an empty rack for one but I have to think if I ever saw one with a big bunch of ADA decals on the side and a 1203 placard on the back, I’d be agog.
Well, without testing, if a customer were to come to harm the company in question would have no way to prove that the product was not contaminated in their factory.
It is of course possible to take samples of every incoming batch of milk and then only to test them in the case of a problem. This may enable you to blame the trucking company, but you have still to deal with a lot of angry customers and a damaged public image.
From this New Yorker article. This part is from page 4.
This is from page 5.
It’s a good read, classic New Yorker magazine. I’m so glad their archive is online and searchable!
Summary: Food grade and chemical tankers are set up differently. Milk is different still. Everything gets washed down between loads, at certified wash stations, monitored by Rabbis if it’s Kosher food being hauled.
Do people cheat on these rules to save money? Sure, but it’s not worth it in the long run.