I need the diesel in my tanks dealt with. Can you do that?

No, and it is worth being clear about it. Getting water and contamination out of stored diesel is a fuel-servicing trade — filtration equipment, biocide, corrosion inhibitor — with its own contractors and its own liability, and we carry none of it. We work on the outside of the tank. If that is what you were searching for, you want a fuel-system company rather than a wash company, and it is better to find that out here than after a truck has been sitting on the lot waiting on us.

How do I know whether my tanks are coated or bare?

If you do not, that is fine. If you have the build sheet, or you know what the truck was ordered with, tell us. Alcoa's own cleaning guide instructs fleet owners to tell their mobile wash contractor which surface treatment its wheels carry — the same question that applies to your tanks — so this is a conversation the manufacturer already expects you to have. We found no truck or tank maker that publishes how many tanks are coated.

Aluminium brightener is sold as a shine product. Is it safe?

It is an acid etch. The shine comes from taking a layer off the metal, not from cleaning it. The CDC has documented truck-wash brighteners built on hydrofluoric acid, and others built on ammonium bifluoride, which becomes hydrofluoric acid once it is dissolved in water. Accuride states that strong detergents and alkaline or acidic cleaners can etch the surface of the aluminium and leave dull areas. There is more on what is in those bottles on our truck washing page; the short version is that they do not go on your tanks.

The tanks already have cloudy, dull patches. Can you bring those back?

Sometimes partly, sometimes not at all, and you should hear that before you book. Dull patches can be etch: a strong cleaner altered the metal itself, so there is no soil left to take off. On bare aluminium, careful mechanical polishing can improve some of it. On a coated tank, if the coating has been worn or sanded through, the wheel maker who publishes on that coating says once you go through it there is no repair, and whether a tank clear coat is more forgiving is not something to find out on your tanks. Send photos of the tanks, or ask us to look at them.

Fuel tank polishing (the outside of the tank)

Two different trades answer to the name fuel tank polishing, and only one of them is ours. We work on the outside: the aluminium saddle tanks on a truck, washed and polished. If what you need is the diesel inside the tank treated — water pulled out, filtration, biocide — that is a fuel-servicing trade with its own contractors and its own equipment, and you are in the wrong place. Everything below is about the metal.

Two trades, one name

The confusion is not the customer's fault; the phrase really does name two jobs. The one we do is metal work on the outside of the truck. The other one treats the diesel, and the problem it solves is water. The Clean Diesel Fuel Alliance guidance the EPA references — written for underground diesel storage tanks — says under a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom of the tank is enough for microbes to live at the boundary where the fuel and the water meet, and what they leave behind plugs filters and gets into injectors. The EPA's own question-and-answer sheet on corrosion in underground tanks storing diesel frames that work the way the trade does it: monitor for water, get the water out, treat with biocide and a corrosion inhibitor. It is a fuel-servicing trade with its own contractors, its own pumps and filters, and its own liability, and we are not it. Worth knowing too: polishing is a vendor's word for that job, not a standards term. Search that federal guidance on managing underground diesel tanks and the word does not appear once. So when a company tells you the industry defines fuel polishing a particular way, no standards body or agency we reached does. We use the phrase here only because it is what people type when they mean the outside of the tank.

Aluminium is attacked from both ends of the scale

Acid attacks aluminium, and reaching for a strong alkaline soap instead is wrong too. Aluminium is amphoteric: it defends itself with a thin oxide film that repairs itself as fast as it is scratched, and that film is only stable across a narrow band, roughly pH 4 to pH 9. Hydro's own design manual puts it plainly — outside that band, strong acid or strong alkali, the metal corrodes relatively rapidly. There is a second half to this. Sodium hydroxide, the caustic in strong alkaline truck-wash degreasers, does not merely clean aluminium; it reacts with it, and the New Jersey Department of Health fact sheet on the substance names flammable, explosive hydrogen gas among the products of that reaction. A caustic degreaser on a saddle tank is a chemical reaction with a gas coming off it, not a strong soap. The acid end is not the gentle one either: an aluminium brightener is an acid etch, and the shine it produces is metal that used to be there. What is actually in those bottles is the argument on our truck washing page. Here it is enough to say that both ends of the pH scale take metal off your tanks, and only one of them looks dangerous.

Coated or bare decides the whole job

Before any product touches a tank, the thing to know is whether the aluminium is bare and polished or left the factory with a clear coating, because the two cases have opposite instructions. The clearest published version of this is on wheels, and it is the same split: Accuride publishes one bulletin for its bare polished aluminium wheels and a separate one for its coated ones. Bare polished aluminium needs a polish, wax or sealant or it pits and water-spots; on the coated finish the same maker says use no polish or wax at all, and Alcoa markets its treated wheel finish as the one you do not polish. The same offer is therefore a service on one surface and damage on the other. A saddle tank is the same two cases in the same metal, so which one yours is comes before any product. The coated case is the unforgiving one: Accuride puts the coating on its wheels at two to three thousandths of an inch, and its repair procedure for heavy, deeper scuffs — an orbital sander with a fine finishing disc — ends by warning that if you go through the coating there is no repair. That warning is about sanding through a wheel coating, and it is why nobody should improvise on a coated tank. No source we found says what share of saddle tanks on the road are coated and what share are bare, so tell us what the truck came with, if you know.

How the work runs, and what polish cannot do

Tank polishing is sold as an add-on to a wash rather than as a job on its own, because polishing a tank with road film still on it just grinds the film into the metal. Heat governs the schedule. The American Architectural Manufacturers Association cleaning guide for finished aluminium says not to chemically clean hot, sun-heated metal: the reactions run fast and unevenly, and the streaking that results may be bad enough that the surface cannot be put back the way it looked. That rules out a bare tank that has been standing in the afternoon sun, and points this work to early hours or shade. The rinse is not optional. Both that guide and Accuride's wheel bulletins are blunt about it — always rinse once the soil is off, residual cleaning solution can stain aluminium, and soap must never be allowed to dry on the surface. Accuride tells owners not to use strong detergents, alkaline cleaners or acidic cleaners on its bare polished aluminium wheels: its wording is that these solutions can etch the surface of the aluminium and leave dull areas. That is a wheel maker writing about wheels, not about tanks. Dull does not wash back out. That is the honest limit here. Polishing is maintenance, not a permanent finish: a bare tank will go dull again. Where an earlier acid wash has already etched the metal, we will say at the estimate what can improve and what is going to stay.

Common questions

I need the diesel in my tanks dealt with. Can you do that?: No, and it is worth being clear about it. Getting water and contamination out of stored diesel is a fuel-servicing trade — filtration equipment, biocide, corrosion inhibitor — with its own contractors and its own liability, and we carry none of it. We work on the outside of the tank. If that is what you were searching for, you want a fuel-system company rather than a wash company, and it is better to find that out here than after a truck has been sitting on the lot waiting on us.
How do I know whether my tanks are coated or bare?: If you do not, that is fine. If you have the build sheet, or you know what the truck was ordered with, tell us. Alcoa's own cleaning guide instructs fleet owners to tell their mobile wash contractor which surface treatment its wheels carry — the same question that applies to your tanks — so this is a conversation the manufacturer already expects you to have. We found no truck or tank maker that publishes how many tanks are coated.
Aluminium brightener is sold as a shine product. Is it safe?: It is an acid etch. The shine comes from taking a layer off the metal, not from cleaning it. The CDC has documented truck-wash brighteners built on hydrofluoric acid, and others built on ammonium bifluoride, which becomes hydrofluoric acid once it is dissolved in water. Accuride states that strong detergents and alkaline or acidic cleaners can etch the surface of the aluminium and leave dull areas. There is more on what is in those bottles on our truck washing page; the short version is that they do not go on your tanks.
The tanks already have cloudy, dull patches. Can you bring those back?: Sometimes partly, sometimes not at all, and you should hear that before you book. Dull patches can be etch: a strong cleaner altered the metal itself, so there is no soil left to take off. On bare aluminium, careful mechanical polishing can improve some of it. On a coated tank, if the coating has been worn or sanded through, the wheel maker who publishes on that coating says once you go through it there is no repair, and whether a tank clear coat is more forgiving is not something to find out on your tanks. Send photos of the tanks, or ask us to look at them.

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