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Yard Boss: Responsible for largest contingency fuel storage in AF

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jacob Morgan
  • 380th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  The fuel feeding the Armed Forces in Southwest Asia is essential for air superiority. The 380th Air Expeditionary Wing delivers this fuel, JP-8, through various platforms both in the air and on the ground, but it is stored by one team. This team is led by the "Yard Boss", who walks the grounds daily making sure the soft fuel lines, connectors, filters, pumping systems and bladders are serviceable.

The Yard Boss is the direct link between the fuels bulk storage team and wing leadership. The Yard Boss must know the quantity and location of all fuel resources at every moment of the day. This ensures that JP-8 is ready to flow when and where it is needed for the fight.

"It takes a lot of confidence and competence to be able to handle Yard Boss," said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Joseph Lima, 380th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron fuels bulk storage supervisor. "Each one of our members knows the fuels storage job, but the Yard Boss is ultimately responsible; it can be stressful, so we rotate the duty between our members."

Every day, the person designated Yard Boss, which ranges in rank from airman 1st class to technical sergeant, walks miles of pipeline and fuel bags keeping a keen eye out for any problems. Their area of responsibility, or the "Yard", is everything in sight in the fuel storage area.

At any given moment, the yard could be receiving, filtering and pumping fuel at multiple locations constituting millions of gallons of JP-8 moving to different locations, said Lima, who calls Bridgeport, Conn., home and is deployed from Minot Air Force Base, N.D. To keep track of storage, the Yard Boss has one very important tool, "the stick."

The Yard Boss uses "the stick" to measure how much fuel is in the bags. The stick is a system of string, a level and a stick. By placing it in the ground and using a level to make sure the string is at 90 degrees perpendicular to the ground, the Yard Boss can determine how much fuel is in the bag by how tall it is.

The amount of fuel in one bag can help the team determine how much fuel is in other locations as well. They must balance the movement of fuel to make sure it is positioned in the right fuel bag when needed. While keeping up with the location and movement of fuel, the Yard Boss is also responsible for fixing discrepancies in soft fuel lines, bags and connections.

This could mean shifting fuel from one side of the yard to the next to fix a fuel line or fuel bag. The Yard Boss and his team manually control the movement of JP-8. They walk from one side of the yard to the other to turn valves, shut off pumps and empty fuel bags.

"The difficulty of the job depends on the day," said U.S. Airman 1st Class Alec Emerson, 380th ELRS fuels bulk storage journeyman. "Every inch of every hose and bladder has to be operational, or there could be problems with distributing fuel to those who need it."

Recently, the yard underwent a retrograde, where old bags were replaced with new ones. The bags are so large that each strip would weigh upwards of 100 pounds. At the same time, the Yard Boss moved fuel around the decommissioned fuel bags while mission was still being carried out. With the temperatures reaching 130 degrees in the yard, the labor was intensive but rewarding, said Lima.

"I am pretty sure we all go through three different uniforms a day," said Emerson, who calls Hampton, Va., home and is deployed from Yokota Air Base, Japan. "You sweat through one, wash and dry it while you have another one on and just continue to rotate them."
With the new bags up and working properly, the Yard Boss and the fuels bulk storage team continue to walk the yard to keep accountability and fix any discrepancies.

"We are the pulse of operations and are responsible for the largest contingency fuel storage area in the Air Force," said Lima. "That means when our aircraft are out there providing airpower for those who need it, there is a good chance, we had hands on their fuel source."