This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
During a training flight, my student and I were practicing landings. Upon one of our landings a fuel truck from the FBO was about to cross the runway.
The FBO’s procedure of having a fuel truck cross the runway is to have the dispatcher in the FBO call on the CTAF “fuel truck preparing to cross runways,” the dispatcher then radios to the fuel truck they can cross if no one replies.
As the FBO was making their radio call for the truck to cross, my student and I were on our landing roll out.
The fuel truck had already started crossing the runway at Taxiway Alpha before the radio call was finished, this blocked us from transmitting on the radio to alert them.
At this point the Cessna 172 had reached the point of the runway between taxiway Alpha and Bravo 6.
My student applied heavier braking action and the truck driver saw that we were still on our landing roll out, which prompted him to brake to ensure there wasn’t a collision.
Better situational awareness and the ability to have the fuel trucks radio on the CTAF themselves would prevent this from happening again.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1963467
Why do operators cheap out on safety. A radio keeps the driver informed, good training sets up employees to look for potential hazards before it is a crisis. A collision is costly, prevention is cheap.
The truck drivers also need to visually check and make sure that there are no aircraft on approach before entering the runway environment. Aircraft have the right of way.
Drive a class B truck much? I can see out the left side of the cab if there is a plane on that side, but if the plane is anywhere above the level of the window frame on the right side, you can’t see them.
To be clear, If the plane is approaching from my right and is high and towards my side of the runway, the frame is in the way and I can’t see them. If they are low, then I can probably see them (based on lighting and the like — night ops makes this more fun).
So I agree, the trucks need to have a radio on the CTAF/UNICOM freq and the drivers need to be taught the correct lingo/language and understand pattern positions, etc. And “on the cheap?” The radios in the trucks do not have to have FAA certification ($$$). Maybe have to have an FCC tag (been over 20 years since I worked on commercial radios, and the regs have changed). But that should drop the cost of such a radio.