As the transportation industry in North America changes. the demand imposed on carriers to offer flexible, reliable, and low maintenance highway cargo tanks has never been greater. They are now, taking a harder look at an all Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic highway cargo tanks.
Even if they have been used, since the early 60’s. in the corrosive transportation very successfully in Canada; the Unites States transportation industry seems to rely on ferrous type of cargo tanks lined with a corrosion resistant barrier.
To date, in excess of 30 millions road miles have been logged on FRJ cargo tank without any incident relating to the material of construction. A portion of this experience has been gained in the us, as the United States Department of Transportation, also known as the US DOT, has recognised this type of cargo tank under special permits issued on a per design basis.
Based on our past experience, and our proven design we have received the only DOT 412 class cargo tank exemption issued by US DOT to manufacture, mark, and sell an all FRP DOT 412 cargo in the US. In Canada, an exemption is not required as regulations have recognised FRP as an acceptable material construction.
The use of Fiberglass Reinforced Plastics as a material of construction was documented (1) as early as 1954 in several fields. Even at that time, the characteristics of FRP were recognised in fields such as automobile, aviation, transportation (Figure 1), boats, bathtubs, electrical parts, and pipes.
In the early 60’s, a Canadian transportation company from Montreal, also turned to FRP. This time, its inherent corrosive resistance and structural integrity were required. The intention was to fabricate an all FRP highway cargo tank that would be used to transport corrosive products such as Hydrochloric acid. At that point, rubber lined steel highway cargo tanks were already used in this service since the mid 40’s, but another type of highway cargo was considered, one that would not deteriorate if it came in direct contact with the corrosive product and also offered a greater toughness than that of steel rubber lined cargo tanks.
Fiberglass Reinforced Plastics, commonly know as FRP, storage were being used very successfully to store corrosives such as Hydrochloric acid. The chemical resistance of FRP in this service had already been proven and was associated with very little maintenance . The next logical step w-as to manufacture a highway cargo tank from the same material.
In the United States, Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic was used to manufactured a transport truck for milk (Figure 1), in the mid 50’s. In Canada. the first self supported FRP highway cargo tank to transport corrosives was manufactured in 1964, as shown in Figure 2, a current picture of one these earlier models. This new cargo tank was designed to integrate the existing working parameters of the transportation industry. Therefore the first design was modeled on existing cargo tanks.