Vacuum tankers are most efficient in their loading process. The preferred loading process is generally to get the vacuum tanker close enough to the water source so that the rig can self-load using the suction hose it brought to the game. Sometimes, access to the water is limited and you have to figure out how to bring the water closer to the vacuum tanker. We commonly call the process an "open relay" in a number of rural water discussions. At our recent drill in Lycoming County, PA folks got to practice "bringing the water"closer to the vacuum tanker by using a 1500 gpm mini pumper to draft from a creek and pump water up a hill to a 3000-gallon dump tank (provided by the vacuum tanker). The vacuum tanker then self-loaded every time it rolled into that particular fill site. When the vacuum tanker left for the dump site the fill site crew simply refilled the dump tank.

Meanwhile, the mini-pumper supported a traditional loading operation by supplying water to an LDH manifold from which tankers were loaded. Efficiency in loading is the name of the game. If you run with a vacuum tanker or might run with a vacuum tanker in your mutual aid area then you need to be versed on how best to support vacuum tanker loading operations.