We have breathing apparatus we have to use on some of the hydrogen sulfide wells. Drivers also keep an emergency five-minute air supply close at hand. Even the gas's smell is an inadequate warning sometimes, he said. In a real high concentration, it could kill your sense of smell so quickly you couldn't tell it was there. Plus, we test all locations before we haul from there.
Drivers also have to know something about practical hydrocarbon chemistry.
They must assess the condition of the oil at each well's storage tank by determining the amount of water and foreign matter in the crude, as well as the oil's temperature and specific gravity. Our drivers are responsible to make sure it is a quality spec crude when we load it. He said it takes about 30-45 minutes at each location to load the crude, including testing the product. Drivers take an average of four loads a day, a total of eight loading or unloading processes. They use a hand-held Norand computer and an onboard printer to produce run tickets they leave at the wells as a record.