Fuel It in Action: 30,000L of Off-Grid Solar Diesel Storage for Total Civil and Haulage
When a yard runs a fleet of trucks, refuelling stops being an errand and starts being a bottleneck. Every trip to a commercial service station costs twice: once on the retail price of the diesel, and again on the driver hours spent getting there, queuing and getting back.
Total Civil and Haulage in Salisbury had exactly that problem. So we built them a way out of it, in the form of a custom 30,000 litre self-bunded diesel tank with a solar powered dispensing system that runs with no mains power on site.
A depot that needed its own fuel
Total Civil and Haulage run a heavy transport and civil haulage operation from their Salisbury yard. Several trucks come home to that yard every night, and every one of them needs to leave full the next morning.
The tank now sitting in the yard carries a safe fill of 29,350 litres, which means the business buys diesel in bulk and dispenses it where the fleet already parks, topped up by scheduled bulk deliveries. No detour, no retail margin, no waiting behind the public at a truck stop.
Off grid by design
The part of this build worth pausing on is the power, or rather the absence of it.
There is no mains supply feeding the dispensing system. It runs on solar. A 100W panel on the roof charges a 120Ah deep cycle AGM battery through an MPPT controller, all housed in the cabinet with the pumps. That single decision is what let the tank be positioned where it made operational sense in the yard, rather than wherever an electrician could reasonably get to.
Two pumps, for one specific reason
Most 12V diesel pumps on the market carry a duty cycle of around 30 minutes. Run one for longer than that without a break and it needs to rest before it will work properly again.
That is a genuine constraint when several trucks can roll back through the gate inside the same hour. So this system was specified with two 12V dispensing pump kits instead of one, each pump rated at 80 litres per minute. The operator selects pump 1 or pump 2 at the control panel, and the fleet can be refuelled back to back without anyone standing around waiting for a pump to cool off.
It is a small change on a drawing. On a Monday morning it is the difference between the fleet leaving on time and the last two trucks sitting idle.
Diesel is drawn through filtration rated for both particulate and water removal before it reaches the nozzle, and the tank breathes through Donaldson trap breathers that keep dust and moisture-laden air out of the stored fuel. Both matter more on stored diesel than most operators expect, because water and dust do their damage long before anyone sees a filter warning.
A backup for the wet weeks
Solar is the primary supply here, not the only one. The system is fitted with a 240V inlet so the battery pack can be topped up from mains power through an extended run of overcast or rainy days. As the footage shows, we know those weeks happen.
The control panel is deliberately plain to operate: battery and pump isolators, a low battery indicator, pump selection, start and stop, and an emergency stop within easy reach.
Built around the operation, not the catalogue
Fuel It is not only a fuel supplier. We spend a lot of time specifying packages around how a business actually works, which is why this one ended up with two pumps, a solar charging system and a mains backup rather than a standard dispensing kit off a price list. We took the same approach at a much smaller scale for Waterford Landscaping Supplies, where a 2,000 litre tank and a 60 litre per minute kit solved the same basic problem in a landscaping yard.
The tank is fully self-bunded and rated for diesel as a Class C1 combustible liquid, so the yard gets compliant bulk storage as well as the operational win.
The headline numbers on this build:
- Nominal capacity: 30,000 litres, with a safe fill of 29,350 litres
- Dispensing: two 12V pumps, each rated at 80 litres per minute, with an automatic shut-off nozzle and a 6 metre delivery hose
- Power: 100W solar and a 120Ah deep cycle battery, with a 240V inlet for mains charging
- Footprint: 6.0 m long by 2.4 m wide by 2.9 m high, CSC plated on a 20 ft high cube container frame
- Approvals: UL142, ULC-S601, AS1940, AS1692 and AS1657
What it changed for the yard
- No more daily service station runs. The fleet fuels at base, before it leaves.
- Bulk buying instead of retail. Diesel is purchased by the delivery, not by the jerry can.
- Refuelling that does not depend on site power. The dispensing system runs off solar, with mains charging held in reserve.
- Capacity for the whole fleet in one window. Two pumps mean the whole fleet can be turned around consecutively.
Not every site suits a tank
Storing your own diesel makes sense when a fleet comes home to the same yard each night. Where the work moves, we bring the fuel to the machines instead, as we do for RD Williams at Rocklea and on the Serpentine Creek Road upgrade. More of those jobs are written up in the field.
Need the same thing in your yard?
If you are running a fleet back to a depot every night, there is usually a strong case for storing your own diesel on site. We build tanks from 250 litres up to containerised units like this one, and we specify the dispensing package around your operation rather than the other way around.
Talk to the Fuel It team on 1300 368 016, email sales@fuelit.com.au, request a quote or get in touch. All Fuel It custom tanks ship ex Queensland.
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