The underground tank has a corrosion-protection system. Someone tested it last fall. The numbers are on a clipboard in the service truck. The office cannot open that clipboard.
A buried steel tank can rust where no one can see it. The test is not a training transcript. It is a reading, a date, a name, and a place the board can find when the next fill is already on the route.
We built TankSpotter so that test has a dated record the office can open. If you run the trucks, this page is for you.
The rule is the state's book, not the pipeline book
Cathodic protection on an LP-gas container lives in the state's adopted NFPA 58. It does not live in 49 CFR Part 192. Part 192 Subpart I is metallic pipeline corrosion control. Confirm 49 CFR 192.451 for that scope. Do not copy a pipeline monitor clock onto a customer tank.
OSHA 1910.110 tells you to coat a buried workplace container. It does not give you a numbered test calendar for a retail underground tank. Read 29 CFR 1910.110 for the coating sentence. Leave the calendar to the state fire marshal's adopted NFPA 58.
Texas writes a fill control. Under 16 TAC 9.116, steel containers and steel piping installed underground, partially underground, or as mounded installations on or after March 1, 2014, shall include a corrosion protection system. Texas will not let that tank be filled unless the system is installed. The licensee who serves the tank monitors it under the 2017 NFPA 58 corrosion section Texas adopted, and keeps the results. Texas still uses the 2017 book (16 TAC 9.401). Do not copy a 2024 section number into a Texas file.
NFPA's 2024 table of contents names corrosion protection as section 6.20. The 2017 book Texas cites uses 6.19. Write the state's adopted year on the cover before you write the section. Do not pick from memory.
A City of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware flyer quoting NFPA 58 lists an install test, a follow-up in the 12-to-18-month window, then later tests, and tells the homeowner to keep the last two results. That flyer is one AHJ's overlay. Confirm your own city and state. Do not treat Rehoboth as a national schedule.
The code, as a North Carolina LP-gas engineer on the NFPA committee stated in trade press this year, does not specify the test method. Training often uses four locations and a voltage threshold. Leave that voltage as training until your adopted print names a method. A national "percent of tanks overdue" figure is not a number we will invent.
What the office actually needs
Last night's post on this site was the snow path photo. The night before that was the fall tank walk. This is a third file. The walk is the inspection. The path is whether the truck can get there. The underground test is whether the buried steel still has a working protection system.
A file that holds up has four parts you can find without a scavenger hunt.
1. The account, identified. Not "the green one on the hill." 2. The test. A photo of the reading, the hardware, the date, and who took it. 3. The follow-up. If the reading failed, what you told the customer, or who you handed it to. 4. A place the office can open without calling the tech who has the day off.
That is dispatch and service paperwork. It sits next to the route. It does not sit in the training LMS.
TankSpotter is a Field Worker OS. The Safety side is the photo and GPS trail. The Training side is a different pillar. Keep them next to each other. Do not mash "underground" and "inspection" into one folder named tanks and hope the right PDF comes up when the filler is already at the lid.
What this is not
It is not a promise that a tank will pass. The reading is the reading.
It is not PERC's job to keep your file. PERC publishes corrosion training through the Learning Center. See PERC's public safety materials on propane.com. That training is not your dated field record.
It is not a substitute for a qualified technician. A photo of a meter is not a leak check. PERC's article Getting Your Propane System Inspected is still the customer-facing inspection reminder. Do not mix the two.
What to do Monday morning
You do not need a new policy to start.
1. Pull five underground or mounded accounts you fill. Can you open the last corrosion test, with a date and a name. 2. Ask a dispatcher who did not take those readings to find them in whatever system you use. Time it. 3. Write the state's adopted NFPA 58 year on a sticky note and put it on the folder. If two people disagree on the year, you do not have a file. You have a rumor. 4. Write one owner for the underground-test file. If two people both think the other one owns it, nobody does.
If those five accounts take more than a few minutes, you already know the work.
Keep the test on the phone that saw it
TankSpotter is a subscription for propane operators who want the photo, the GPS, and the timestamp in one place the office can open. The tech records the reading while they are there. The office does not rebuild the file from a clipboard that rode home in the service truck.
We do not install anodes. We do not stand in for a qualified technician. Your people still do the stop. The product is the record.
Want to see the test photo next to the rest of the day's work. Request a TankSpotter demo.
This page is general information for propane operators in the United States. It is not legal advice. Confirm your state's adopted NFPA 58 edition, your insurer's list, and the current PERC materials before you treat any example here as your requirement. Texas 16 TAC 9.116 and 9.401; Rehoboth Beach 2025 underground-container flyer; 49 CFR 192.451 on the eCFR. Safety guidance for customers is PERC's, at propane.com.
Photo by D Goug via Pexels. Used under the Pexels license.