Food-grade washout

Food-grade washout: A food-grade washout is a cleaning of a tanker or trailer, inside and out, to the standard a food shipper requires before loading, documented with a wash ticket. Milk, juice, edible oils, sugar and grain loads all depend on it, and shippers often check the last few products the equipment hauled. Source

Why it is required

The FDA's sanitary transportation rule covers shippers, loaders, carriers and receivers moving food by truck or rail. Carriers must keep vehicles and equipment in sanitary condition and able to hold the temperatures the food needs. Source In practice, food shippers set their own wash requirements on top, often naming the wash procedure, the sanitizer and the products the tank may have carried before.

The wash ticket

A tank wash issues a ticket showing the date, the trailer, the last product, the cleaning steps and often a seal number. The shipper checks it before loading, and carriers keep it with the load records. Records kept under the sanitary transport rule are held for periods up to 12 months depending on the record. Source

In practice EXAMPLE

A stainless tanker delivers corn syrup and is offered a load of vegetable oil the next morning. The oil shipper requires a food-grade washout and a ticket listing the previous three products, all food. The driver stops at a tank wash on the way, pays for the wash and arrives with a sealed tank and the ticket. A tank that last hauled a chemical would have been refused, wash or not. Related reading: grain trucks and water hauling.

Dedicated food equipment

Many food-grade carriers keep tanks and trailers dedicated to food only, because some shippers won't load equipment that has ever hauled a non-food product, wash or no wash. Dedicated equipment means fewer loads to choose from but steadier customers and simpler washes. Carriers who switch between food and non-food products need careful records of every load and wash, and should ask each shipper which previous products it accepts before they take the load.

Ask the shipper for its wash requirements in writing before you dispatch, find a wash on the route that can meet them, and add the wash time and cost to the load price.