Fuelishness
May 22, 2016
Another first: fueling our RV.
Sounds simple—it ought to be just like putting gas in a car,
right?
In theory, it is. Pull up alongside the pump (making sure it
dispenses diesel, not gas), slide your credit card, and insert the nozzle of
the fuel hose into the opening on the RV.
Believe it or not, the first two steps proved slightly
bewildering.
Having experienced the unpleasantness of narrow lanes (see
Maiden Voyage—Day 1), we opted to take the outside pump—the one with no
barriers on the right side. Hmm. Haven’t seen a gas pump like this before.
Nonplussed, we circled back around (a rather large circle,
since we needed a turning radius accommodating our length of roughly 52 feet
[RV + hitch + toad]) and pulled up to a different pump. We can fill our fuel
tank from either side, so I went to the pump on the passenger side. Hmm.
Haven’t seen a pump like this before, either. We’re getting closer—at least
this one has a hose—but it’s still somewhat perplexing.*
There’s a normal-looking pump on the driver’s side, so we’ll
use that one.
Step 1 accomplished! Now for step 2—slide credit card
(because I’m not sure I’ve even seen
as much cash as it takes to fill a 90-gallon tank, much less carried that kind
of stash on me).
Oh.
No problem. The booth is right here.
Empty. And locked. And with no indication of when or if the
attendant will return.
Now we were getting a little concerned. We had seen signs at
some service centers indicating that they had no fuel; might this be one of
them, despite the lack of a warning sign? Or was there some other booth that
only experienced truckers and RVers know about? Was this some kind of newbie
hazing? (I may or may not have checked for hidden cameras and a snickering
audience. Not that I’m paranoid or self-conscious or anything.)
Fortunately, an attendant appeared in short order, with nary
a snicker to be heard. Sheepishly, we admitted that we had no idea how much to
prepay, since we have no experiencing estimating how much diesel we’ll need
based on the fuel-gauge reading.
Oh, just fill it up and then pay, the attendant tells us.
Huh? He doesn’t need to do anything from inside the booth
first? We could have been pumping diesel while we were waiting for the attendant
to show up? Live and learn.
In six- or seven-hundred miles or so, we’ll try this again
and see if the next station works the same way.
*Newbie note 1: Apparently the pump on the driver's side and the pump on the passenger's side are somehow linked, so if you pump from the passenger's side—the pump with a hose but no screens showing gallons, etc.—the data shows up on the pump on the driver's side. Our theory is that you could fill from both sides simultaneously, but when we suggested this, the attendant looked at us funny. We have yet to test the theory.
Newbie note 2: Diesel tends to foam when you’re filling
your tank, with the result that the pump will shut off before your tank is
completely full. I think you’re probably supposed to wait a bit and then top it
off, but I may need to read up on that to be sure.
2 comments
I love the picture of you wiping the windshield...I had no idea the RV was so tall! So many adventures in just a few days!
ReplyDeleteYou were correct on the dual pumps! They are set-up for semi trucks which have saddle tanks on both sides. One pump is a slave to the other so that the driver can fill up both saddle tanks at the same time.
ReplyDelete