Familiarize Yourself With Your Fire Extinguisher

Understand how too pull it out and how it operates. I never thought I would use it until today. Long story short pulled into a Marathon truck stop as I always do. This stop has a huge lot and the fuel lanes are almost always empty.

I pull in to the lane closest too. Fuel up to grab a few things and pay for gas. As I step out, immediately I notice the reefer running, and sounds louder than I've ever heard one run before. My hands are full so I jump in the cab and proceed to update my logs and was going to take a look after. I start to smell something like burning antifreeze glance over, and there's a little bit of smoke coming from the reefer compartment. With in maybe 30 seconds smoke is pouring out. I immediately threw it in gear and pulled up to get out of the fuel island, jumped out turned it off through open the doors and grabbed the extinguisher. I waited a few seconds to see if I saw any flames and I did not. Left it off and was able to continue on without any damage to product. But a nerve racking moment.

That will get the juices flowing! good thing it didnt get worse.

Yeah Bobcat it did. I'm thinking another 30 seconds and it would of started on fire.

Still not sure what caused it. Thought maybe I belt but it all looked in tacked. Hard to say.

Brian, It sure seems like you kept a level head, moved the truck away from a very serious area and proceeded to control the fire. My hat is off to your very level headed approach to a dangerous situation. You demonstrated smarts and great judgement in this bad moment. You are sure to continue as a great example of a "real" professional.

Thanks Harry, just something I wanted to pass along not a hey look at me. Because as I was grabbing the damn thing I was thinking too myself, I have barely ever touched it other than kicking it will climbing in on occasion. I've gotten classes of them before but Wondered how many other new drivers have these days.

OD policy is to not use the fire extinguisher unless to prevent loss of life, as far as property they rather lose that then someone getting hurt or killed trying to fight a fire.

I'm just glad you didnt burn down my oasis. Although I just just started my own run Monday and wont be passing by there anymore.

That's interesting Bobcat I did not know that. So maybe don't familiarize yourself than lol.

1 Report/alert someone 2 Make sure the area is safe for you to fight it.

3 Class A fire. Anything that that turns into ash. Use CO2 bottle with short burst at the base of fire. Class B fire. Fuel fire, cut off source of fuel. Don't use water unless you are jettesting the fuel (probably not an option) CO2 is not meant for this kind of fire just get safely away. Class C. Electrical fire. Turn off the source. Once power is out and there is still a fire than it's now a class A fire. Class D. Burning metal that makes it's own oxygen when burning. I have no idea if a truck would have something like this such as magnesium. Get away and stay away.

After the fire is out then you need to worry about reflash. That is when embers re ignited or the original cause is still present.

This is truncated Navy Shipboard fire fighting that I modified due to a lack of other fire fighting gear such as PKP, AFFF, or Halon.

This is just what I would do, but ofcourse follow the instructions on your bottle and company training.