Spinning/rolling gas cylinders to transport them - video

[Jon]

Spinning/rolling gas cylinders to transport them. 10-second video:

Previously:

Oxy-acetylene gas bottle crash explosion - video
Painting propane tanks by spinning them - GIF
Gas cylinder welding fire - GIF

[Frank S]

I've done it that way almost forever. But you will find out real quick if you haven't swept the floor recently.Having a cylinder dance over a stray 3/8 nut gets your attention right now.

[Toolmaker51]

Same here, sort of. Not as fast and no way full bottles.
But seen this replayed in every shop using bottled compressed gases.
Those guys have be fairly stocky to run bottles that well. An awful lot of kinetic energy, teetering on a tiny pivot, and a center of gravity already off kilter.

[owen moore]

I have seen this a hundred times when our delivery guy used to deliver gas to our shop. I called him " the man who had gas"! Every time he rolled those cylinders into our shop, I wanted to run and hide!

[Clockguy]

I have to, in all good conscience, relate a true story to all of you after watching this video. I taught a vocational program for Auto Body Repair in a local community college in SoIL for 13 years after owning and operating my own body shop for almost 15 years and one of the safety films I showed to all of my new students was about safety with gas bottles.

It was a short film, maybe 5 or 6 minutes long and was a recreation of an actual accident in a mechanic's shop some years ago. It showed a gas delivery man bringing in a new bottle of oxygen for an acetylene torch. As he was rolling the bottle across the floor on a 2 wheel hand truck, he hit something on the floor and the bottle tipped forward accidently and fell to the concrete floor. As it hit the floor, the brass shutoff valve on top of the bottle broke off and that bottle went flying through the air much like a rocket off a launch pad! Thankfully, it missed a couple of employees in the shop area but it had so much power behind it that it flew completely through the concrete wall of the shop! When the owner ran next door to the front end alignment shop to check that nobody was hurt, he saw a gaping hole in THAT wall also and long story short, that bottle broke through 2 concrete block walls bounced off a floor mounted hydraulic car lifter and hit a man 25' back in the shop ....... and killed him instantly. After that film was over, you could hear a pin drop in my classroom, there were over 20 young students sitting there with their mouths hanging open and not hardly breathing. Talk about driving the point across about shop safety when handling any type of heavy gas bottles ......

The weird thing about this was this delivery guy was using an old hand truck with big cast iron wheels on it because it rolled so easy with 2 or 3 bottles chained to it. But this was only one bottle and he decided not to chain it down because the torch he was going to switch the bottle out on was barely 10' away from the entrance door and he was running late. And the object he hit with the hand truck?? Well it was a 1/4" drive quarter inch shallow well socket. It was just enough to tip that bottle forward and gravity did the rest. And the socket? It was a Snap-On and didn't even show a scratch.
Think about that the next time you see someone trying some "trick" stuff with a gas bottle.

[Frank S]

Sounds like he was hauling the bottle sans the protective cap.
I was running a Battalion welding shop in a driver's training brigade at FT. Polk One afternoon a deuce&a half showed up with a resupply of cylinders. the guys wer sliding them one at a time off the back of the truck. one guy in the bed one guy on the ground The guy in the truck would use a short hook like a hay hook in the cap then lower it down. One of the caps must have been loose or cross threaded and only on by a thread. Anyway the cap came off the valve hung on the loop handle of the tailgate and off like a rocket it went straight through my shop through a 2" thick solid shop door across the drive through the next building wall, luckily straight down the center of the class room exploding the instructors podium through the back wall ricocheted off something at the next building then through another small building it finally came to rest without injuring anyone out in the middle of a parade field. where another training battalion was conducting drills.
The accident investigation and report was not fun. All my Col. had to say about it was next time invite him. The gas company wound up having to pay for the damages since they were the ones who loaded the truck for the Gi's to deliver.to me.
I've already told the story of the Gi's deciding to have some fun disposing of the gas contained in some cylinders and how one of their adhock rockets destroyed a Jeep I was driving for another col.

[Jon]

This guy is even better.

[Radioman]

I worked for a gas house for 6yrs in the 90’s. This was common practice back then. My buddy is still in the industry and tells me this practice is a huge no no now. If you’re caught doing it then you’re out. 0 tolerance. Insurance companies think it’s dangerous and won’t cover any accidents happening from the practice. Drivers are required to use 2-wheelers. I can tell you kicking tanks is a lot easier on your back than any 2-wheeler. Typical people that sit behind desks telling actual workers how they should do their jobs.

[Frank S]

I worked for a gas house for 6yrs in the 90’s. This was common practice back then. My buddy is still in the industry and tells me this practice is a huge no no now. If you’re caught doing it then you’re out. 0 tolerance. Insurance companies think it’s dangerous and won’t cover any accidents happening from the practice. Drivers are required to use 2-wheelers. I can tell you kicking tanks is a lot easier on your back than any 2-wheeler. Typical people that sit behind desks telling actual workers how they should do their jobs.

Yep desk squatters who have never done anything more difficult or dangerous than try and figure out how to use their electric pencil sharpener.if they even know what a pencil is now days

[Rorschach]

Anybody caught doing that here would be fired instantly. Bottles much be transported one at a time on a special truck, chained and capped.