Plastic Gas containers and Plastic liners in Pickups?

[tguy]

Getting old and trying to reduce "accidents." Reading the WARNING label on the pickup liner cautioning that static electrixity could build in the container and cause an explosion.
Is this a real hazard? I hate taking the containers (plastic and metal) out of the truck and filling then having to pickup and put back in!
Is there a way to ground the truck/bed-liner to make this a safe practice???

 

[Industrial Toys]

You still would not be able to get around the rules anyway. Containers must be on the ground, around here.

If a gasoline nozzle set a plastic jerry can on fire in the back of a pickup, it's anybody's guess where the electric charge went to.

 

[davrow]

Is this a real hazard?

Yes, it is real. Action starts at about 1:00.

surveillance cam footage of truck catching fire

 

[ericm979]

American Petroleum Institute says

"When dispensing gasoline into a container, use only an approved portable container and place it on the ground to avoid a possible static electricity ignition of fuel vapors. Containers should never be filled while inside a vehicle or its trunk, the bed of a pickup truck or the floor of a trailer."

API | Staying Safe at the Pump

 

[Industrial Toys]

Weird how the underside of the truck caught fire. Better video would have been nice to see what he did. Certainly using that lit gasoline nozzle as a flamethrower didn't help matters.

Maybe, he was electrically charged and reached in and touched the grounded filling nozzle, creating a spark. Might have had nothing to do with the pickup bed, gas cans, or static build up of running a liquid through a hose.

 

[RandyT]

Gas containers are treated to allow electric discharge through the material that they are made out of. the plastic bed liner doesn't offer the same grounding principle so can allow static electric buildup within the gas container since it can't discharge, and basically you get a lightning strike effect which ignites the fuel. Have personally seen the same thing occur on engines when the cylinder gets full of gasoline and then the plug is removed and the engine is cranked causing the fuel to spray from the spark plug hole.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I thought they were often HDPE. Having any kind of conductive nature would be news to me. Possibly like antistatic material ??? If so, the whole theory of placing them on the ground would make perfect sense.

And I don't think it has anything to do with the bed liner. The whole truck is insulated from earth.

 

[Threepoint]

Sometimes I'll need to fill seven 5-gal diesel containers during one trip to the station. I agree with tguy that it's no fun humping them back into the truck, but there's no way I'll risk trying to fill them in place. :no:

 

[lman]

Diesel would not ignite the way the gas did in the video. Also the warning from API was referring to gasoline.

 

[RandyT]

I thought they were often HDPE. Having any kind of conductive nature would be news to me. Possibly like antistatic material ??? If so, the whole theory of placing them on the ground would make perfect sense.

And I don't think it has anything to do with the bed liner. The whole truck is insulated from earth.

The tires are conductive to ground due to the carbon content.