Rod Ohira's People
Tanker driver learned to steer her future

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Dina Alibang started out as a sporting goods clerk, worked her way up to grocery cashier and eventually grocery manager at Holiday Mart on Kaheka Street before it became a Daiei store.

Dina Alibang of Makakilo, a gas-delivery truck driver for 20 years, is Tesoro Hawaii's most experienced driver. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

By 1979, Alibang had come to realize that without a skill, her employment opportunities were always going to be limited. So at age 28, she learned how to drive big trucks, entering the male-dominated world of 18-wheelers.

Labor Day marked the 20th anniversary of Alibang's career as a gas-delivery truck driver. The Makakilo resident is the most experienced of Tesoro Hawaii's 12 drivers and until last month — when two women were hired by other companies — she knew of no other woman driving commercial gas tankers in Hawai'i.

It's a testament to her driving skills that she regularly drives a rig over 20 feet long into the narrow, no-margin-for-error drop point of Tesoro's Coast Guard Red Hill station, considered by company drivers as the toughest to negotiate. With respect of her peers, the sass Alibang encountered 20 years ago from skeptics has gone the way of cheap gas prices.

"I'm a workaholic and I like to drive," said Alibang, a single parent of a 13-year-old daughter who usually works 60 hours a week.

Alibang was delivering for Star Produce — driving vans and later small flat-bed trucks — when she decided in 1979 to attend truck-driving school here.

"I learned to drive on old Richard Lee (construction) trucks that had double sticks and no power steering," Alibang said. "The men would shake their heads and stand there watching, just to to see if I would bang anything."

Two years later, she was licensed to drive any truck in Hawai'i.

"I wanted to get out of produce because I didn't like loading and unloading containers," Alibang said. Driving gas trucks, she decided, offered the best working conditions. "Unlike construction, you have work rain or shine. I figured everybody is always going to need gas."

But wherever she applied, the reaction was basically the same.

"As soon as I walked in the door, someone would say, 'We don't have any secretarial positions.' I'd tell them I was applying for a driving job. At one company, a man told me 'I didn't know they let men into the YWCA.' There were hardly any females driving buses or big trucks at the time."

Frustrated but undeterred, she went to the state unemployment office for help. The office referred her to Micro-Metrics (formerly Diamond Head Petroleum).

Micro-Metrics interviewed Alibang four times before hiring her.

"I must have talked to every single boss in the company," she said. "They kept asking me why I wanted to drive gas trucks. Michael Ito was the owner and his secretary used to work in payroll at Holiday Mart. She told them I was a hard worker and that's how I got my foot in the door."

Alibang began working for Micro-Metrics in 1981and was assigned a 1969 GMC tanker that could hold 2,000 gallons.

Over the years, her trucks have reflected the names of PRI (Pacific Resources Inc.), which took over Micro-Metrics' operation in 1990; BHP (Broken Hills Proprietary) and Tesoro Hawaii.

Operating double tankers loaded with 9,100 gallons of gas is a dangerous job that pays well, Alibang said. "It's more dangerous when the tanks are empty because the vapors can ignite," she said.

Reversing a double tanker in congested areas and driving in traffic with empty tanks, especially on a rainy day, present the most difficult tasks, Alibang said.

"It's always dangerous when cars cut in front of us because any stop causes the trailer to fish tail," she said. "There's also some narrow roads here. On Beretania Street in front of the State Capitol, the lane is barely wide enough for a big truck."

Her busiest days, Alibang said, occur during Tesoro's popular "Seek and Save" promotion that offers special gas prices. In one day, it's not uncommon for her to make three deliveries to the same station, she noted.

So what does the "first lady" of Hawai'i gas trucking enjoy doing in her spare time?

"Driving Go-karts at Hawaii Raceway Park," Alibang said.

Reach Rod Ohira at 535-8181 or rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.