A trucker should never run out of fuel. In a double fatality case handled by the firm, the chain of events began when a trucker stalled his truck in the middle of a busy highway from fuel starvation. This is a fancy way of saying he ran out of fuel. But, most folks don't understand all of the ways that a heavy truck is different from a car. So, we produced this animation, along with the related one you can find on this website, to show how a truck can have fuel in its tanks and still be out of fuel. Note the fuel pick-up tube inside the tank is continually getting exposed to air as the fuel sloshed back and forth with the stop-and-go of rush hour traffic. This is the tube that sucks the fuel up to the engine. Big diesels don't do well when they suck air. A responsible trucker would never allow the fuel supply to get so low. This also represents a violation of federal regulations requiring the trucker to refrain from traveling if the condition of his truck is such that he cannot make it safely from his departure location to his next intended destination.
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