If only a wholesale petroleum products supplier like Midtex could monitor tanks remotely for its key customers. Then it would know when tank levels were low and could top them off as required, practically unnoticed. All of its customers would benefit because Midtex would be able to stick to its schedules.
Ask Russell Fischer, director of wholesale operations at the New Braunfels, Texas-based Midtex, and he’ll tell you he plans to do just that. In fact, he is doing that on 35 tanks—many his own--but he wants to expand from remote diesel tanks scattered in the boonies of the Texas Hill Country to the consumer lubricant industry of the suburbs and cities. He’s aiming squarely for the convenience lube and oil change market.
Fischer and Midtex already have the technology they need. It’s a Digital Level Sensor (DLS) that they get from Siemens. The DLS almost seems to anticipate Fischer’s requirements. It’s low maintenance, and once installed never needs to be recalibrated. It measures up to two different fluid densities and up to eight temperatures on a single sensor, and temperature changes don’t affect its accuracy. It can be used with oil, water, diesel, kerosene, gasoline and many other liquids. Plus, it reports tank levels back to Fischer on a pre-set schedule using a communication box and custom software
A deceptively simple looking device with a minimal number of connections and wires, a Siemens DLS system can poll up to 32 tanks on a single phone line, checking levels and submitting reports to Midtex. It calculates how much is left in a tank, enabling Midtex to gain efficiencies and bring only the required fuel. The system, which has two separate floats weighted for two different gravities of fluids, also calculates the amount of water in a tank. Since the volume of a lube varies according to temperature, the DLS system corrects for volume of oil according to current temperature.
Diesel tank sizes at the truck and quarry sites that Midtex services range from 2,000 to 10,000 gallons. One customer used 750,000 gallons of diesel last year. A busy construction site will go through a 10,000-gallon tank of diesel every two to three days, says Seaman, who manages Midtex’s San Antonio operation 30 miles south of the New Braunfels headquarters.
With that kind of thirst for fuel, somebody had better be watching those tank levels, but gauging or “sticking” a tank can be an unpleasant and risky assignment, often handed down from senior, to less senior, to junior, to brand new employee. In all weather and climates, someone must climb on top of the tank and drop a steel tape and bobber inside, find out how many inches of fuel or lube they have, clean and stow the tape and bobber, then calculate from inches to gallons or barrels, then call the supplier and tell him how much fuel he needs.
“If someone forgets to stick a tank, then we get a call with a little panic to the edge of the voice,” said Seaman. “Thirty minutes later, we usually get another call. Maybe this time there’s more anger than panic in the voice, and he wants to know if that fuel truck is on its way.” It’s a completely different situation with customers connected via DLS. “When we’re making a delivery, we can tell what the lube cost us, what it will cost them, how much they will get, how much we’ll have left in the truck, etc., etc.”
“We think we can convince people in the lube business that they can find a better use of manpower, plus reduce or eliminate safety issues and human error,” says Fischer. “What I’m really interested in and focused on is putting our level sensors in oil tanks at lube centers.” Fisher, who already supplies lubes to lube centers, wants to sign “keep full” contracts with lube centers for which he would take over all refill responsibility.
“We feel it will pay off for us and our customers,” he says. “After we develop a history, we know which lubes and how much a customer uses. Then we’ll be able to take over responsibility for watching lube levels. Just as with our diesel customers, we’re providing more than a fuel, we’re providing a service. We want to leave our customers to concentrate on more important things than the level in their tanks.”
There’s Gold In Them Thar Tanks
John Sheesley has been known to sniff the air for tanks, fuel tanks. His wife Martha has too many memories of seemingly endless journeys with him down hard country roads in search of tanks and tank farms.
“You’d be amazed at how many tanks are out there,” he says with a prospector’s gleam in his eyes. As much as he might enjoy treasure hunting for fuel tanks, what Sheesley really wants to do is bring automation and communications to this American outback. He wants to tap 10,000-gallon tanks with Digital Level Sensors (DLS) from Siemens, allowing him to watch fuel levels rise and fall from his office in San Antonio. He wants the strip miners and construction contractors in South Texas to let him worry about how to feed their monster shovels and trucks. That was his dream during his years with Midtex Oil, and it still is, but with a few twists. With his current company, RediFuel, he sees no reason to limit his dream to South Texas.
“All I wanted to do was to be able to read a tank remotely in my office,” he recalls. Once he found the DLS, he only had to add a communications line and power, and he’s working over several ideas now to eliminate even those. “Eventually, I believe we’ll see a DLS that is completely self contained.”
What separates RediFuel from the Midtex vision of monitoring lube centers is the Sheesley idea of eliminating the daily changes in fuel prices. “I want to sell fuel at a 12-month, locked-in price under a keep-full contract,” he says. And he doesn’t mean just for the regional San Antonio area. Sheesely can imagine monitoring tanks across Texas, maybe even further, and brokering with regional fuel wholesalers who can meet his demand.
“After the DLSs are set, they’re bullet proof. There’s nothing that’s going to prevent them from working, no drift or anything,” he says. Once online, RediFuels customers are immediately minus the liability and man-hours inherent in climbing tanks and checking fuel manually.
“I can see where the customer is frustrated, and even though the reason may be because one of his men forgot to read the tank, he’s got to call the fuel vendor and make him jump through hoops, rerouting deliveries. It’s not the fuel vendors fault, but he’s the one who looks bad,” Sheesley says. “The DLS is by far the best tool I’ve found to help us create a system with no outages.”