WorldWide Drilling Resource

Tales from the Field by Jeremy C. Wire Geoconsultants, Inc. An Onlooker’s Advice Gets a Tank on the Move Sometimes a casual observer, not actively involved in an operation having difficulty in the field, may provide a practical solution to the problem, perhaps a unique resolution not initially thought of by others. A case in point involved the removal from a jobsite of a big silo which had previously contained a dry cement mixture for a deep water well sealing operation and was ready to be transported. Imagine a tank trailer with rear wheels attached, about 50 feet or so long, upended when in use, and now emptied of its contents. It was ready to be tilted back to a horizontal position, attached to a tractor truck, and hauled back to the service company’s facility. The truck driver, who had arrived at the site earlier in the morning, and facing a 250-mile trip back to home base, was anxious to get the tank hitched up and back on the road. A portable crane finally showed up late, rigged up, and a hook was attached to the top of the tank. It should have been an easy operation, tilting the tank slightly with a turn of the boom of the crane, so upon slowly releasing the hoisting cable, grav- ity would take over, bringing the tank to a horizontal position. Not this time! The tank could not be tilted far enough from ver- tical so it would then fall of its own weight. After several tries and no success, the drill crew brought some timbers over and placed them under one edge of the tank to hopefully increase the tilt once a motion in the right direction was started by the crane operator. However, the boost still was not enough to establish a tip- ping point so gravity would prevail. The tank looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Just as everyone involved was losing patience with the delay, a farmhand on the property, who had been watching, stepped up and said: “If you dug a shallow pit so the edge of the tank and the wheels could go into it and then be more off-balance when tilted, and also provide a ramp to pull the tank out once it is down, that might work.” It didn’t take long for the crew to implement the idea. A backhoe appeared and a shallow pit and ramp were quickly excavated in the sandy soil. Now, with a little help from the crane, the tank came nicely to rest in a relatively horizontal position. The tractor truck was quickly hitched up. The tank easily moved out of the pit and up the ramp. The greatly relieved truck driver was now on his way. Once the crane was rigged down and left the site, there was complete silence. No one spoke a word, but nodded in agreement that someone such as the onlooker, who by this time had disappeared, had grasped the situation and saw more clearly how to solve it than those more intimately involved. As the saying goes, they were not thinking clearly “outside the box” or maybe in this case “outside the tank”! Jeremy Jeremy Wire may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com 16 JULY 2018 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® C&G