[bognition]

“ It had three handles, enabling one man to carry two cans and pass one to another man in bucket-brigade fashion. Its capacity was approximately five U.S. gallons; its weight filled, forty-five pounds. Thanks to an air chamber at the top, it would float on water if dropped overboard or from a plane. Its short spout was secured with a snap closure that could be propped open for pouring, making unnecessary any funnel or opener. A gasket made the mouth leakproof. An air-breathing tube from the spout to the air space kept the pouring smooth. And most important, the can’s inside was lined with an impervious plastic material developed for the insides of steel beer barrels. This enabled the jerrycan to be used alternately for gasoline and water.”

Wow, seems like a lot of little design choices went into this can.

I love how good UX crops up everywhere.

[zbrozek]

Now if only the portable fuel cans I'm able to buy were this good. Instead, they have nozzles that require a third hand to operate and they don't have breather tubes (by law these days, I think), so they make a mess every time. Filling my wood chipper's tank is frustrating.

[toast0]

There are vendors of real, usable fuel cans. They're kind of expensive, but there's a nice feeling of usefulness everytime you use one.

From my perspective there's three options:

a) get an old, plastic can with a vent from the before times

b) buy an expensive NATO metal can, and the flexible spout 'for amusement purposes only'

c) lobby your government to allow gas cans that don't cause actual spills everytime in the pursuit of avoiding fume leakage or whatever.

[incomplete]

you can also buy a hunsaker jug... they don't pack as nicely as jerrycans, but they're US legal, have a vent, and i can't recommend them enough. i use them for fueling a 24 hours of lemons race car, and they make my least favorite thing in the world relatively safe and drama free. they dump 5gal in ~20sec or so.

https://hunsakerusa.com/collections/5-gallon-quikfill-jugs

now, if you illegally modify one by adding a legit breather tube... you can dump 5g in ~10 sec or less. :)

[porknubbins]

How is the rate of evaporation from the old type? I lose gas through evaporation from the new type anyway so they don’t even appear to work. It would be awesome to fill a jerry can with non ethanol fuel if it would last for at least a few months.

[toast0]

I don't think they changed the plastic when they changed the shape, so I'd expect fuel vapor to permeate the old plastic cans too (or at least some of them). A metal can with a good seal doesn't let vapor out, so be careful with big temperature changes.

[porknubbins]

Ah that makes sense. I can definitely see the pressure buildup in the plastic type. If there is a risk of exploding metal jerry cans that would be quite a hazard.

[kubanczyk]

> they don't have breather tubes

Just pour from the opposite side, e.g. https://youtu.be/LA7IbFzCNC4?t=51

[jcims]

That only works if there's no fill tube.

[jcadam]

Yes, the newer EPA-approved cans are designed to ensure that you spill gas all over your hands and/or the ground when using them.

[thrower123]

The regulation that made the old-style vented plastic gasoline cans illegal to produce is on my Mt Rushmore of well-intentioned, catastrophic failures.

[tadfisher]

The breather is under the plastic button or collar you depress while filling (with your third hand). The mechanism is easy to break.

[LgWoodenBadger]

They still come with breather tubes...

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Scepter-USA-5-Gallon-Plastic-Gasoli...

This works great for filling my tractor, though I have the diesel variant

[dillondoyle]

Check out Wavian. When looking around I read that they are the 'official' jerry can. I think the one consumers can get might be different if anyone knows that?

It is very sturdy feeling. Literally got last week so tbd on long term use I'm optimistic.

Though I had a problem trying to fill the two up at gas station. I'm going to try again I think it was just the pump or card was acting up since it also wouldn't flow into my car.

[koofdoof]

I believe you can buy old style nozzle kits to add to new gas cans to restore them to their former glory.

[0xffff2]

You can still get good quality fuel cans. Just don't complain about the price.

wavianusa.com

[throwaway1777]

Sold out like everything these days.

[kwhitefoot]

Surely the nozzle has a breather tube? At least the one that I screw on to the plastic petrol can I use to fill my lawnmower does. I'm not in the US though; it's probably Norwegian but possibly British, can't remember where I bought it.

[specialist]

> I love how good UX crops up everywhere.

Me too. Empathetically. These deep dives feed my soul.

The Donald Norman books, obviously. I've read similar accounts about forks (the utensil), pencils, shipping containers, etc.

One organizational detail that pops out is the German government sponsored a design competition and then seriously reviewed everything.

Another data point in favor of broadly applying X-Prize like strategy to encourage innovation.

DARPA and a few others are (sometimes) smart this way. The book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity uses economic logic (based on net present value, aka NPV) to also make the argument in favor.

[chaorace]

Something that I took away was that "good design" can only go so far in terms of strategic advantage. The Germans invested considerable funding, research, and testing into their cans... only to have them copied. Sure, they enjoyed a few years of genuine advantage, but that probably stemmed just as much from the woefully underdesigned state of allied gas cans.

My takeaway here is that they should have iterated until they had a "great, but not perfect" design. That way, when the design inevitably gets aped... there's still room for the opposing side to introduce their own improvements which you can steal right back.

[JasonFruit]

Two problems with that thinking: a) even if you think you have a perfect design, you are still at "great, but not perfect", and b) there's no strategic advantage to doing less well than your opponent. In trying to avoid the later state where your enemy catches up to you, you're reducing or eliminating the initial advantage, which is probably not what you want.

[chaorace]

I'm more thinking that there are diminishing returns which are hard to justify when the cost of stealing a design remains fairly flat.

[usrusr]

You make it sounds as if they wasted years gold-plating fuel can design when they should have - done what exactly? Not waste 21 years from losing one world war to starting another? Deliberately start with inferior logistics to keep the next iteration in reserve for when the first version gets copied? (not even that far off, considering that weird window/düppel stalemate where for a while both sides held back the same innovation for fear of the other side copying it)

[chaorace]

I'm not attempting to back-seat drive the third reich here -- I make software, not war. I'm just interested in gleaning design insight from history.

In any case... I do think that, ultimately, the Jerrycan was more useful to the allied forces. The copycat designs were instrumental in the invasion of Europe, which pushed supply logistics far harder than the blitz ever did.

[tialaramex]

FWIW "The Blitz" is used exclusively to refer to German bombing of towns and cities after they'd lost the Battle of Britain (a battle for Air Superiority over England, which would have considerably improved prospects for German invasion if it came to that), and is never short for "Blitzkrieg" (the Germans never called it this) a fighting style of very rapid advances allowing German forces to overwhelm their European enemy before they were properly organised to defend.

So, the Blitz didn't rely on Jerrycans at all, planes leave from and, if they aren't destroyed, return to your airbases, which have plenty of fuel and refuelling apparatus in place.

[chaorace]

My bad, that's what I get for firing off a response on my phone. I appreciate the correction!