Drums on Their Sides, a Weeping Bung, and a Payload That Does Not Add Up
You are at a paint and coatings plant to pick up 24 steel drums, 55 gallons each at 400 lb, of UN1993, Flammable liquid, n.o.s. (contains toluene), 3, PG II, plus 10 pallets of non-hazardous bagged sand at 900 lb each. The loader has laid the drums horizontally on the trailer floor, three wide and stacked two high, with no dunnage, no load bars, and nothing against the walls, saying, "They fit better that way and they're sealed." Two drums sit with the bung pointing down. Behind the last stack you see a wet, solvent-smelling patch and a slow drip forming at a bung. The shipping clerk says it is "a few drops" and hands you a shipping paper reading "Flammable liquid, n.o.s. (toluene), 3, UN1993, PG II, 24 drums, 9,600 lb," with an emergency number. It is 95°F. Your trailer's payload capacity is 15,000 lb.
1. Do you accept the drums loaded on their sides? Explain what the regulations and the packaging design actually require.
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No. A 55-gallon steel drum is designed to be shipped with its closures up. Horizontal storage puts product against the bung and the drum's rolling hoops, and at 95°F a toluene-based liquid is generating vapor pressure against a closure that was never intended to be the low point of the package. Two bungs pointing down make it a near-certainty.
Section 177.834(a) requires packages to be secured against shifting, and 173.24 requires packagings to be closed so that no hazardous material escapes under normal conditions of transport, including temperature and vibration. A drum on its side with the closure down fails that standard in practice, which is why the leaking drum has already appeared.
You have two lawful paths:
- Ask the loader to restack all drums upright, closures up, with dunnage and bracing, and to re-inspect each drum for leakage; or
- Refuse the load and notify dispatch.
What you may not do is "drive gently" and hope. The 190-mile run at highway speed will work the closures far harder than the dock did. Decline in writing and record who gave the instruction.
2. What happens to the leaking drum, and how does it affect the paperwork?
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A leaking package may not be offered or transported (173.24). The options are all on the shipper's side of the line:
- Repair or reclose the drum, then verify it does not weep after a short hold.
- Overpack it into a salvage packaging that meets the requirements for the material, marked and labeled as a salvage packaging.
- Transfer the contents to a sound drum of the same specification and relabel.
- Remove the drum from the shipment.
If the drum comes off, the shipping paper must be corrected: the piece count goes from 24 to 23 and the total quantity from 9,600 lb to 9,200 lb, because the paper must describe what is actually on the vehicle (172.201). You do not sign a paper that describes freight you are not carrying, and you do not carry freight that is not on the paper.
The "few drops" argument misses the point twice: a release from a package is reportable to the carrier in its own right, and toluene has a low flash point, so a drip onto a hot trailer deck is a fire risk, not a cosmetic issue. Note the time, the drum markings, and the amount in your record.
3. Evaluate the whole load plan: weight, securement, and placarding. What do you require before the doors close?
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Weight. 24 x 400 = 9,600 lb of drums plus 10 x 900 = 9,000 lb of sand gives 18,600 lb against a 15,000-lb payload rating. The plan is over capacity by 3,600 lb before any dunnage. You cannot fix that with securement; either the sand or part of the drums comes off, or a second trailer is used. Also check axle and tire limits after the load is redistributed - the drums should sit over or slightly ahead of the drive axles, not all at the tail.
Securement. Upright drums, closures up, loaded against the nose or a bulkhead, with dunnage between rows and load bars or straps rated for the weight. Under 393.106 the aggregate working load limit of the tiedowns must be at least half the cargo weight, and friction alone does not count. Drum pallets and sand pallets both need to be restrained front, back, and side.
Placards. 9,600 lb of a Table 2 Class 3 material is far above 1,001 lb, so FLAMMABLE placards go on both sides and both ends, displayed before the vehicle leaves the yard.
Nothing about the 17:00 appointment changes any of these numbers.