I was coming back from doing laundry this morning and saw a pickup truck coming down the street with I’d guess about a 6 foot long, 4-5 inch diameter tube coming out of it, with an upside-down funnel thingy on the end. At first I thought it was a city truck vacuuming the gutter or something, though it seemed too far away from the ground to be very effective at that. As I got closer I saw it was Power & Light Company pickup truck.
What were they doing?
Checking for gas leaks? just a guess.
brian
Very Odd. Just yesterday I was driving home from work and saw what seems to be the exact same thing you describe. I live in CT…Can’t wait to hear what it is…
I’m not sure here, but I do know that power companies sometimes have underground vaults for electrical distribution. When sending a worker into such a vault, fresh air needs to be supplied. I think these trucks are not vacuums, but rather blowers to shoot fresh air down a manhole into the underground area for worker safety.
In working for an electrical company, I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but I’ll add some comments.
The company I work for uses fans to ventilate manholes, but I don’t know about other companies. You mentioned a vacuum truck. Was the tube locked in position? In other words, can it be moved from the position it’s in and used as a hand held device? We use vacuum trucks to clean up manholes, but you would be able to see a fair amount of hose connected to the tube on the ones we use.
Sorry, the description doesn’t really ring a bell with me.
I’ve seen them…a truck with funnels attached to hoses hanging from the front bumper.
IANAgas company worker, but I theorize the funnels are attached to some sophisticated sensor equipment able to detect extremely minute amounts of gas, directly through the ground.
I don’t know that it was a vacuum truck or that it was actually vacuuming anything. That was just what came to mind in trying to describe what I saw. It looked like a gray vacuum cleaner hose with a white funnel on the end.
The truck was definitely moving relatively slowly, but not crawling, down the street, not stopped at a manhole or anything like that. It looked like it could be used as a hand held device but I can’t see any advantage to driving down the street with it hooked up like it was if that’s the case.
The checking for gas leaks is a possibility. Or maybe they were recapturing stray voltage. (kidding)
Now that’s an idea!!!
Thanks for the best laugh of the day.
Yes, they’re gas “sniffers”.
I used to live in the old part of our city, where it was built in the late 1800s. Gas leaks were/are a common problem with aging infrastructure and in fact a few houses have just blown up for no apparent reason.
Our local gas company had a fleet of trucks with those funnel devices off the front and they’d drive around the neighborhoods at 5-10 mph. One would drive past any given address about once a week. And there was always some digging going on somewhere within a few blocks where they’d found a leak.