Mysterious/Nefarious Pumpy Handly Trucky Things...

March 23, 2007 3:29 PM

What the heck are these pump handle thingies on the back of this truck? I am seeing more and more full sized trucks (which appear to be personal vehicles, not corporate vehicles) with these pumps on the tool box. It looks like the pump handle you would use to pump gas INTO your car, and clearly it's attached to some kind of pump, but I don't see and reservoirs on the truck which would lead me to believe these pump handles are used to pump something OUT of the truck. Anyway, photo inside... Would love to know what the heck they are...
posted by jwhowa to work & money (10 answers total)

Diesel ?
posted by mrleec at 3:46 PM on March 23, 2007

Guys who run service calls to off-road equipment, or to road side breakdowns often have a bed tank equipped with a pump out, to deliver fuel to bulldozers, bobcats, generators, or other engine powered equipment. It's both safer and easier to do it this way than to hoist around 5 gallon plastic or metal containers, or handle 55 gallon fuel drums and hand pumps.
posted by paulsc at 3:47 PM on March 23, 2007

What paulsc said, and they are also popular with off-roading people who haul their dune-buggies/motorcylces whatever out to wherever they ride them for many days at a time. I see a lot of them down here where people often play and compete in Glamis, Baja etc.
posted by snsranch at 4:31 PM on March 23, 2007

What you take for the tool box is in fact the tank.
posted by OmieWise at 5:51 PM on March 23, 2007

where's the photo inside??
posted by clh at 5:57 PM on March 23, 2007

Ummm.. from your description, I have to agree with paulsc as well, waiting for the photo inside to confirm..
posted by defcom1 at 6:16 PM on March 23, 2007

Here's the pic. Don't know why the first one didn't show.
posted by jwhowa at 6:43 PM on March 23, 2007

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/175/431807500_170581b9b4_b.jpg
posted by jwhowa at 6:44 PM on March 23, 2007

Yes those are pumps mounted to a tidy tank. The black thing is a tool box mounted to the rear of the the tidy tank (you can see that the toolbox is just forward of centre from the placement of the wood stakes in the rail pockets).

The guy probably has two tanks (hence two pumps) for diesel/gas or marked/unmarked fuel.
posted by Mitheral at 8:26 PM on March 23, 2007

Thank you all for the replies! I just couldn't figure out why someone would be pumping gas OUT of their car, but this makes sense!
posted by jwhowa at 8:36 AM on March 24, 2007