August 4, 2011 • 29 mins
Every year auto manufactures make millions of vehicles -- and they have to end up somewhere. But what exactly happens to a car when you take it to a dump? Join Scott and Ben as they investigate the fascinating machines used to crush and shred cars.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood, and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff works dot com. Everybody, welcome
to Car Stuff. I'm Scott Benjamin and my name is
Ben Bowling. Listeners might not know this, Scott, but you
and I have some silent partners in the podcast studio here.
(00:24):
Yes we do, yep, uh, and and we get where
I'm going with this. I'm sitting right next to Pablo Picasso.
Thankfully a censored picture. I didn't know that somebody has
censored the picture. But yes, there's a piece of tape
discreetly placed over Well, I'm sitting next to Pablo Picasso,
let's leave it at that. And he has a rather
confused artistic expression. And I'm sitting next to a very
(00:47):
smug looking Nicola Tesla. I see that, and uh. Whenever
we cover alternative energy vehicles, I always feel like I
need to look to the left. And this guy is
looking at me like I'm getting my facts are all. Yeah,
he does have a kind of a damning look on
his face, like maybe, what did you just say? That's true?
(01:07):
That's true. But you know what, Nick, You're gonna have
to sit this one out. I call him Nick, You're
going to have to sit this one out because today
Scott and I are going to talk about something that
is actually fairly fairly recent in the history of cars,
but now fairly ubiquitous and uh, frankly kind of fascinating. Yeah,
(01:31):
this is uh to me. This is one of the
cooler things that's out there. Have you Have you ever
seen this in a movie? I've seen this in Oh
these things, I think I have And I think I
know what you're talking about. Like, maybe there there's someone
still in the vehicle. Is that what we're talking about?
All right, we're talking about car crushers and uh, and
what Ben's talking about is maybe the tense moment where
(01:54):
there's someone's pushing the button for the car to be crushed,
and someone peeks out the window that you know they
had been knocked out previously, somehow ended up in the
back seat or was intentionally put in the back seat,
and the music starts and hear the overpowering sound of
the hydraulic Yeah, that's right, of the hydraulics pushing the
plates closer and closer exactly, Or the kidnappee is still
(02:14):
in the trunk of the car. That kind of thing
that's that's enough to give you nightmares. I think. So
it sounds weird if you don't know about car crushers. Uh. Basically,
a car crusher is just, uh an umbrella term for
a number of different devices that are used to compress
the remains of a car after it's been stripped of
(02:37):
anything you could possibly use. Think about the old idea
of Native Americans killing bison uh and using every part
of the animal, like you want to try to get
everything usable off of the car before you crush it. Wow. Wow,
is that weird? No, I don't know. I just didn't
expect it to go to bison and Native Americans. But
that's good. That's a good analogy because, um, what they
(02:59):
do is they take off you know, let's say that
this car has desirable headlights that you know are still good.
They'll take those off. They'll take ten minutes to do that.
They'll take you know, chrome pieces off if they want to,
you know, the transmission, even exactly these things are are
definitely we'll call it looted for parts, but really they
own the vehicle. So I don't know if you can
call it looting or not, but they're they're they're stripped
(03:20):
of everything valuable, Like you said, you know, viable wheels
are valuable, tires are valuable. Um parts even components even
like axles and things like that, were engines. Um, here's
a good question. And stop me if I'm interrupting you. Okay,
here's a good question. Uh, why do we crush cars?
Here's the here's the the whole I guess the whole
(03:44):
moral of this story is that we crushed cars because
we like to make new cars. Um, they're recycled eventually,
and uh, well, you know, I want to get to
where they go after this, because that's really there's another
step in this beyond even the car crusher. Hum, that's
it's really important. And maybe boy dare I say it,
even maybe even cooler than a car crusher, but car
(04:06):
crushers are still cool. Yeah, I'll go with it. There's
a reason why we put them in this order. Yeah,
there's a reason we're talking about car crushers first. And
really that's kind of the the initial step in this
whole process, you know. And we talked about how they're crushed.
They're crushed down to ben Get this, a car can
be crushed down to nine inches thick, which you can
also watch on YouTube. Yes, yes, and that is really cool.
(04:28):
I think it's it's neat, it's it's slow. It happens
very slowly. But you've really got to kind of wrap
your head around what you're seeing in order to understand
how impressive that is, because you watch it happen, and
it just happens, and you know, they load another one
on and they crush another one right on top of it,
and it looks easy. It does look it looks so
easy that it doesn't it doesn't quite sink in what's happening.
(04:51):
That they're taking an entire automobile and making it flat
as a pancake right in front of your eyes within seconds,
and that that to me, is impressive. Yeah. We should
also tell a lot of people who've seen the films.
Most of my experience before doing podcast research here was
with the car crushers depicted in movies, and those are
kind of bail crushers, so they create a cube, but
(05:14):
far more common will be what Scott and I are
talking about, where it's crushed into like a sheet. Now,
I believe the cube ones. I believe they have to
have the engine, transmission axles, things like that removed because
those are some of the heavier items. You're crushing the
frame and the shell of the car, and those those
are so impressive to see that. I mean, have you
ever seen a car truckload of square cars headed down
(05:38):
the road? You know, they're all bailed together. I haven't
in a long long time because recently and I have
seen these. I've seen a lot of flattened cars. You know,
there's still the length of the car. They're all flattened
down to, Like we said, none most of them are
about a foot thick, and they're just piled one on
top of the other. You may see twenty or thirty
on the back of a big flatbed truck headed down
(05:58):
the road. Uh, you know they've been crushed by this
this hydraulic system that puts out three thousand pounds per
square inches. What they say, hey, that's again. Listen to
that number. Three thousand pounds per square inch is what
they're exerting on a car in order to flatten it.
And then do uh, do a rough estimate in your
head if you would, about how many square inches your
(06:20):
car is square, and then multiply that by three thousands. Amazing,
And if you're as ridiculous as I am this, this
is kind of dumb. But over the weekend, when when
I was watching some car crushing videos, I went out
to I was gonna wash my car, and I was
standing out there. I was by the back end of
the Monte Carlo, by the trunk, and I put my
(06:41):
hand on it. I just went I looked around, you know,
shift the eye, probably my neighbors already thinking really weird,
and then I just gave it a couple of pushes
just to see. I was trying to picture maybe the
springs moved if the tires weren't on it. Yeah, yeah,
I kind of bumped it a little bit, but if
the if the tires weren't on it, I thought, uh,
(07:02):
is there any way that I could do more than
make a dent? And it's it's just so strange to
see these things crumble so easily, crumple rather so easily.
And you know with these with this, I don't know
the style that makes like a pancake on multip'll call
it just a flat a flat vehicle. Um, what's what's
(07:22):
really kind of new about this is I think I mean,
in a lot of cases they do take off parts
that they can use the axles, the blocking things. But
I believe Ben that they can now crush engine blocks
with these things because they do eventually go to another machine.
They can handle items like that, and in the past
that wasn't true. I'm laughing because I could tell well,
(07:43):
we'll get through crushers still, Okay, We'll still hang on
to crushers for just another minute, just another minute. Um.
It does make sense because more than half of a
junct car is made from steel, usually on average, and
there's a compelling economic reason to recycle this because steel
(08:04):
in a per ton price is fairly profitable. Um. And
so if you can take a machine that was made
in the nineteen seventies and it's still an operation several
car crushers are, uh, then it's just all money off
the top man, Yeah, exactly. And that's that's another remarkable
thing about some of these car crushers is that you'll
find that a lot of them, as you mentioned, you know,
(08:25):
in the seventies, Um, they're they're getting up there in age,
and you know what, they're still just as tough as
they were the day they were built. Because these things
are built out of hardened steel. They have to be
you know, tougher than whatever they're crushing. They have to
be extremely um, just solid, solid machines that you know,
are well engineered, that you know they've they've they've they've
(08:47):
proven themselves in over decades of time just to be repairing.
I mean, you know, the hammers and things that they
used to to smash up the wheels of the grinding wheels.
Those are replaceable parts, those are consumables. But the machine
itself has to be able to withstand, you know, whether
because these things aren't inside there outside right, they're they're
massive and um, they have to be able to do
(09:08):
like I said, be be stronger than what they're crushing.
They have to you know, stand up under these tremendous forces. Um.
And just you know, the maintenance of them is important
as well. You know, of course they wouldn't last as
long as they do without maintenance. But um, overall, extremely
extremely tough. Because some of these are approaching, you know,
fifty years old. Yeah, and some of them are as
(09:28):
you would assume, gigantic. A lot of the older ones
are stationary, but from my understanding, more and more of
the newer ones are actually portable and uh, just just
for a quick step now Scott, and now we're talking
about this off of the air. Uh the oh no, wait,
I can't do it yet. We have to wait yet
(09:50):
because that's uh so we're coming up to. But you know,
if you want to look into if you're guessing the
price of something like this, yeah, I gotta tell you.
I found this to be somewhat reasonable for what you're getting.
I thought this was remarkably affordable if you're in the
market for a car crusher um Ballpark around a hundred fifty,
(10:11):
which I don't know, it seems all right. It seemed
like you would make an awful lot of money if
you were scrapping cars, you know, if you had a
service bringing vehicles to you and you know there you
were uh cemented in this this uh this system. You know,
you're you're somewhere in there where you had a supply
and you had someone to sell to and you know, etcetera.
It seems like this would would pay for itself off
a quick that's I was expecting like a million. Now
(10:36):
that's at the top of the line. That's not the
best one, good one, but that that will crush a car. Yeah,
oh man, And you can see there there's so many
different types. There's one really strange one that that I saw.
I say really strange. It was just unorthodox to me.
Where the car was pushed through. Uh this frame that
wasn't wasn't very large, and there's an operators standing by,
(10:58):
and then there are two play eights on either side,
like the walls, and they pushed down and they are
not large enough to crush an entire car, So you
move it through in segments. Makes sense, So you buy
a smaller unit and just make take a little bit
more labor, but eventually does the same job. Yeah, eventually
does the same job. But Scott, we've we've gone through
(11:19):
the steps. We've gone through the fact that the car
is stripped of everything remotely valuable. In some cases, they
can even crack the engine block now, so they may
leave that in if it's broken. We also need to mention,
of course, hazardous materials are removed, like you don't want
the battery in there when you crush it. And uh,
then the fuel tanks, you want to drain the fuel tanks.
(11:41):
There's a there's other safety procedures that they do along
the way, and then we get to the actual crushing. Now,
if it's a large operation. They may wait until they've
got a number of cars gutted and then turn on
the crushers so they can do this all at once,
and then once they've got it all crushed, everything's gone.
We just have these pancake piles of cars. We're not
(12:04):
done yet. Oh no, this is uh, like I said,
this is maybe to me, but I actually I think
it is more interesting to watch than the crusher. I think, yeah,
I believe just my opinion. I mean, other people have
differing but you want to tell them where they go
ben after the crushed, well, once they're crushed, especially if
you recycle. Uh, you can't use just a flat pancake car.
(12:28):
You have to put it. You have to somehow get
it into smaller pieces make it manageable. You have to
shred it. The car is shredded. Are you listening to this?
It's shredded. This is probably one of the cooler things
that I've ever seen, a car shredder. This is crazy
and and intensely efficient. It's incredibly efficient. And we're talking
(12:50):
about massive, massive machines right then. These are these are
the type of thing that will be featured on you know,
like those uh, massive structures or or Marvel. Yeah, exactly
one of those shows Ben, how are they typically measured
when they talk about um, this is this astounds me?
How are they measured when they when they talk about
(13:11):
the size of these things? Now you're not talking about tons, right, no,
not tons, but they do do that also. But what
are some of the more impressive figures that you'll you'll hear? Oh,
I don't know. Measurement in terms of acres maybe acres large,
that's right, it's it's measured in acres. That's how big
this machine is. And you know, you think it would
(13:32):
be something that's just you know, fed like you think
of your little office shredder. You know that you put
paper into or something like that, similar idea, and that
it has cams and gears that that destroy whatever goes inside,
but on cross cuts and everything. But imagine that on
such a scale that you can dump a vehicle that's
been flattened into it. And really really ponder this when
I tell you that they can put in sometimes as
(13:54):
many as four at a time, Yes, and it will
in a matter of minutes eat the cars. It looks
like that's the way I compare it. It looks like
it is eating these cars, and um. When when you
check these things out, what what you'll see is that
they'll take the crushed cars and they'll they'll die pretty
(14:19):
much digest them into these chunks that are about the
size of an average human face. And I'm gonna I'm
gonna correct you here because I've got a number here
that's dramatically different. What's that you know you said minutes? Right?
Oh wait, yeah, this is this that may have been
early on in different types of shredders, smaller shredders, some
(14:40):
of those shredders that they call the mega shredders, the
big ones, these huge shredders that you said bers. They
can take a car in and completely chew it up
in three to four seconds. That is crazy four seconds.
So even if they do six cars at a time,
then that's still not a in it correct correct. So
(15:02):
it's incredibly fast, faster than you think, really, and it
does it makes them into the size you know, it
takes a car, eats it and what comes out the
other side is um. But I think they described it
as like fist size pieces of metal, you know, shredded
different shapes and sizes, of course, but it fist size
is a good general rule for the size that they're
(15:23):
looking for. And one of the biggest shredders, if we
can talk about this one was located in Elkhart, Indiana,
owned by Sturgis Iron and Metal. Uh. This one had
an eight thousand pounds electric motor. The hammers spun at
one dred and seventy five miles per hour. One thing
(15:43):
that is different between a car shredder and the shredder
you may have in your home or your office is
that these things, these these belts that are turning that
are actually shredding the cars can be thought of like hammers. Yeah,
this hammer wheel that he's talking about is like a
drum that has great big metal protrusions all around it
(16:05):
and it just spins and they can back that up
and you know, make it run forward and backward the
belt that leads into it and uh, you know that
that will just slam into the car and just just
crushes it into oblivion and then it's shredded from that
point with disks and um. It's just it's an incredible
process that you can watch. But um, and it's all
very high tech as well. You know, there's an operator
that likens you know, you can watch these interviews with
(16:27):
people that run these things, and they say it's like
playing a video game, and it becomes that way. Now
they understand, you know, the danger of what they're doing.
They understand, you know, what's happening, and they really get
have a sense for, um, you know, just how dangerous
this machine could be. So they're very very careful about it.
But the controls are very much like a video game.
They're watching screens that monitor the processes. They of course
(16:50):
got a great view of what's happening, but at the
same time it's very dangerous too because you know, things
can be thrown out, you know, at bullet speed at them,
because this machine is really really churning in order to
devour cars at three to four seconds you know per car,
so um incredibly fast running machines. But um, imagine, just
(17:10):
let me just take for a second to think what
happens if you know the work. You know, someone on
the line gets there, you know, their their shirt sleeves
stuck in it. They've gotta be able to shut that
down quick, um, really quick, because you don't want to
be anywhere near those jaws when they're operating. And did
you just did you catch this little statistic that I
found incredibly interesting. Uh, the at least the shred or
(17:31):
in Indiana is so powerful that uh they have they
had to build it on special dampeners really to prevent
seismic vibrations. That you know what that sounds like a
stamping plant. Stamping plants are built with instead of imagining floors.
And this is the way you're talking about the dampeners.
I don't know what they were made of, but um
(17:52):
in a in a stamping plant where they have stamping
machines that that drive down from stories above to stamp
up panels in ours. If you imagine like a post,
a wooden post, imagine that post driven straight down to
the floor. So when you look at the top of
the floor, you see it almost looks like a parquet
floor with um. You know, the top you'll see eight
by eight pieces of wood or four by four pieces
(18:14):
of wood rather than planks like you would in a
normal wood floor. And that's because the wood floor goes deep,
deep into the ground and it absorbs it better that
way because it's individual pieces of wood. So they may
have a similar thing going with them, or maybe it
was on rubber dampers or whatever. But again the same
thing so that you know, it doesn't get into the
the underlaying rock structure, and well it could destroy the
(18:36):
building all around it. The machine could. So, UM, I
understand what you're talking about, but this is something that
was operating continually, twenty four hours a day, just churning
out these these uh these cars or destroying these cars. Rather,
I think it was shut down, wasn't it. Yeah, yeah,
that's we're I'm not completely sure, but I believe so
(18:56):
as well, because we had talked about this. There's a
there's the company at self I think went bankrupt in
two thousand eight or nine something like that. So, uh,
some of this information that you'll read online about it,
you know, you'll find some stuff about it being closed down.
The I think the entire steel works or iron works,
they're just yeah, exactly, but um still doesn't take away
from the impressive machine that they had there and and
(19:18):
there others like it. Yes, that's that is true. It's
but it's not the last of its free by any means. Uh.
We should also point out to any would be entrepreneurs, uh,
auto shredders are going to be more expensive than uh,
these car crushers. Were talking about just because of the
technology and the scale involved. Sure, and they were invented
(19:41):
in nineteen five. That's when the shredder, the car shredder
was really invented by Alton Newell, who was an engineer.
Um Um had his own company, his own shredding company,
and decided that this is a better way to do it,
because you know, up until this point, been the way
that they compacted cars and the way they recycled cars
was they would take them apart where they would they
would you know, take the individdle pieces off of them
(20:02):
and kind of cannibalize them, or you know, after that
was done, they would literally attack it with hammers and
axes and destroy the cars. And it would take sometimes
it would take a full day to dismantle or destroy
a car. Or they would simply take a large machine
like a like a tractor and it would just drive
over it again and again and again until it crushed it.
(20:23):
And you could see these old videos of them crushing
old cars or hitting them with axes and you know,
to take them down, and it was very labor intensive.
And that's when Alton, who owned the salvage yard, said,
you know, I think there's a better way. Let's automate
this whole thing, and from that point, you know, it's
just become incredible. I mean, we we shred papers with
similar type things. We uh. You know, it's a very
(20:45):
very simple version of what you you see happening at
the the auto salvage yards. But if you live anywhere
near one of these, it's it's worthwhile to take a
look at it. You want to go see it in action,
or go online and take a look at some of
these shredding videos. If you're afraid of getting nailed with
a fist sized chunk of metal, you can you can
check it out online. And for everyone who wonders about this,
(21:08):
I know I'm talking about the economic benefits, but there
are clearly environmental benefits as well. Automobiles are the most
recycled consumer product in the United States, Is that right?
I believe that because just the massive quantities that are
produced every day and then the massive quantities that are
destroyed every day. Yes, um, you know, imagine if we
(21:29):
were taking all those cars and just dumping them into
a landfill. That's enormous. And that's what we were doing
up until a certain point when I mentioned, you know,
the tractors, crushing cars. Those are just landfill material. Or
people would just abandon them out and you know, the
desert or you know, the the the what's now, what's
now the suburbs of cities, you know, to drive them
out somewhere and park them in the in the woods
(21:50):
and just leave them. That happened often. And um, you know,
so you've got these well piles of rusty junk laying
around and now you know this is this is it's
much more affordable for everybody if we continue to recycle
cars like this, you know, if they continue to use
these old cars to recycle them, because you know, it's
it's the cost of mining versus the cost of recycling,
(22:13):
and the recycling costs far outweighs the mining costs for
new materials on these things. The recycling costs is far
less than did I say the wrong way? I got
what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, something like that. So so
there there we there we have it. You got you
got anything else? I do? Yes, I do? And this,
you know, I have something that is a tremendous waste
(22:34):
of time. And by that, I mean it's so interesting
that I think you're gonna end up sitting online watching
these little short videos again and again and again, and
uh this, I promise our car stuff listeners, this will
not disappoint because there's a little something for everybody here. Okay,
there's a place where you can go online and all
(22:55):
you have to do is type in into Google Search,
type type in watch it shred y, watch it shred Now.
The interesting thing about this is that when you do that,
it takes you to UM a site called s s I,
which is Shredding Systems Incorporated, and they have done this
really awesome thing. They've made short video clips of their product,
(23:17):
which are shredders shredding anything and everything that you can imagine.
And this is often listener requests. It's not just know
these are These are people that that right in and say,
in fact, cars are very a very small part of
this site. They they call in and they you know,
they've got this this machine that they call the Monster,
(23:37):
which is like fifteen feet tall, eight horsepower driving these
shredding um looks like cams that destroy these things whatever
you put in there. And they've got other shredders as well.
They're very specialized, you know, for what they can handle,
and some can handle cars. Some can't, some can handle metal,
others can't. You know, some are for bio biological material,
(23:59):
and you know it's set et cetera. You know, on
and on. But they've got this incredible list of things
that you can watch shred and it sounds like you've
been there. Yeah, I checked. I checked it out a
little bit because I got there actually from checking out
will It Blend, which is a similar idea where they
just where there's a group of people who put things
like cameras and stuff into blenders, and so I had
(24:24):
seen some of this and I was just astounded because
I actually saw it before we did a new research
for the shredding and the crushing episode that we're doing today.
I was just amazed because it was actually the first
time I had seen a vehicle shredder. Okay, now, this,
the vehicle shreder is pretty awesome. I gotta tell you.
There are some things that I may have found even
(24:44):
more interesting to watch being shredded on this will at
shred site than a car. And I don't know why
that is. I mean, it was It's it's very very
entertaining to watch car being just chewed up and into nothing.
But do you have like a top three. I've got
more than top three. I can quickly go through and
I can describe in d till. But you know if
some of these you'll find more exciting than others. So
these are Scott's favorite. I gotta say one of my
(25:05):
favorite ones. I think a fifty five gallon drum. Oh yeah, yeah.
If it catches when this this machine they throw in
this this hopper and as it kind of bounces around,
they see these massive cams just you know, just churning
waiting for something to catch. And you know it's it's
a round object, a big fifty five gallon drum, steel drum.
As soon as it catches a corner, it just pulls
(25:26):
it right and sucks it right in and it's gone.
It does. It bounces around until finally an edge catches,
and then and then it sucks it right in. But
you will not believe the speed that fifty gallon drum
disappears in this thing and this hopper. It gives you
an idea of just how dangerous this thing is. If
you know, somewhere tragically or to fall inside this thing.
(25:47):
I can't imagine what would happen, well, I can't. I
can imagine what would happen now some of the other
things that they throw in there, and these are things
that you would never think could be shredded. A piano,
then yeah, they can throw a piano in there, and
it makes quick work. The key to this whole thing
seemed to be if it can catch an edge, it
just continues to pull it in and that's it. There's
(26:07):
no escape, none at all. Um a plastic boat which
goes away quickly, very quickly. Bicycles, soccer balls which are
entertaining to watch because they bounced all over the place
and then they just popped one after the other. And
when they do this they do thirty or forty at
a time. They've got materials, you know, like use sports
(26:28):
equipment that they need to shred. For the material, um,
bowling balls and pins. Then you can throw bowling balls
in this thing and it will shred them and what
comes out the other side looks like bits of ceramic.
But to see it crushing bowling balls, that's impressive, um amazing.
I mean again, thirty or forty or fifty of these
(26:48):
at a time, it is frightening, as when you think
about how heavy bowling ball is and how just how
tough that surfaces. I can't even imagine putting a chisel
against it and hitting with a hammer and making that
do anything. Amazing, something I didn't think they could do.
What was it? Engine blocks? They can throw full engine
blocks into this thing and it will chip away at them.
(27:08):
It takes a little longer. The sound is deafening, but
you know these big, huge cams that that grind this
thing apart. They just kind of chip away at it
until eventually there's nothing left. It's incredible to watch. Uh,
steel rebar, which is also oppressive. Couches, Um, let's see
tractor tires. These enormous tractor tires just shredded into nothing,
(27:30):
you know, quickly. Couches I've mentioned couches, but other wooden furniture. UM, refrigerators.
Then you can dump a refrigerator into there. That makes sense.
It's still weirds me out, though, I'm still kind of
stuck on the bowling balls are The bowling balls are
probably one of the stranger things I I just I
can't even begin to tell you the odd things that
you can put in here. But there's a huge list.
You can search it and you can suggest things for them.
(27:53):
Shred the only thing I don't like about this site,
this little thing is sometimes you'll you'll get one of
these that they've done like a little skit. And I
gotta tell you, I'm not a fan of the skits
set up kind of a setup like you know, the
guy's out right in his lawnmower and it doesn't quite work,
and uh you know, so he gets mad at it
and tips it over. The next thing you see is
it dumped in the shredder. Things like that. But um,
(28:14):
I just like it when they just get straight to
the shredding, let's see it. Also, those hammers have to
be replaced nearly every day, go right, which is no surprise. Yeah, yeah,
I guess so if you've seen auto lines in process
when they're machining engine blocks and things, they have to
replace the cutting material often, if not you know, hourly.
Uh so the hammers I can imagine we're out quickly too.
(28:37):
So if you live near one of these outfits and
you're feeling charitable and what, you still work well enough
to be able to hear our podcast, right, and you
want to send us some photos of either shredders or crushers,
we would love to check them out. You can post
them on our Facebook. You can send them to us
on Twitter. You can also read up on our article
(29:01):
about car crushers on how stuff works dot com, and
you can send us an email directly at car stuff
at how stuff work dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The how Stuff Works iPhone
(29:23):
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
Go behind the wheel, under the hood, and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff works dot com. Everybody, welcome
to Car Stuff. I'm Scott Benjamin and my name is
Ben Bowling. Listeners might not know this, Scott, but you
and I have some silent partners in the podcast studio here.
(00:24):
Yes we do, yep, uh, and and we get where
I'm going with this. I'm sitting right next to Pablo Picasso.
Thankfully a censored picture. I didn't know that somebody has
censored the picture. But yes, there's a piece of tape
discreetly placed over Well, I'm sitting next to Pablo Picasso,
let's leave it at that. And he has a rather
confused artistic expression. And I'm sitting next to a very
(00:47):
smug looking Nicola Tesla. I see that, and uh. Whenever
we cover alternative energy vehicles, I always feel like I
need to look to the left. And this guy is
looking at me like I'm getting my facts are all. Yeah,
he does have a kind of a damning look on
his face, like maybe, what did you just say? That's true?
(01:07):
That's true. But you know what, Nick, You're gonna have
to sit this one out. I call him Nick, You're
going to have to sit this one out because today
Scott and I are going to talk about something that
is actually fairly fairly recent in the history of cars,
but now fairly ubiquitous and uh, frankly kind of fascinating. Yeah,
(01:31):
this is uh to me. This is one of the
cooler things that's out there. Have you Have you ever
seen this in a movie? I've seen this in Oh
these things, I think I have And I think I
know what you're talking about. Like, maybe there there's someone
still in the vehicle. Is that what we're talking about?
All right, we're talking about car crushers and uh, and
what Ben's talking about is maybe the tense moment where
(01:54):
there's someone's pushing the button for the car to be crushed,
and someone peeks out the window that you know they
had been knocked out previously, somehow ended up in the
back seat or was intentionally put in the back seat,
and the music starts and hear the overpowering sound of
the hydraulic Yeah, that's right, of the hydraulics pushing the
plates closer and closer exactly, Or the kidnappee is still
(02:14):
in the trunk of the car. That kind of thing
that's that's enough to give you nightmares. I think. So
it sounds weird if you don't know about car crushers. Uh. Basically,
a car crusher is just, uh an umbrella term for
a number of different devices that are used to compress
the remains of a car after it's been stripped of
(02:37):
anything you could possibly use. Think about the old idea
of Native Americans killing bison uh and using every part
of the animal, like you want to try to get
everything usable off of the car before you crush it. Wow. Wow,
is that weird? No, I don't know. I just didn't
expect it to go to bison and Native Americans. But
that's good. That's a good analogy because, um, what they
(02:59):
do is they take off you know, let's say that
this car has desirable headlights that you know are still good.
They'll take those off. They'll take ten minutes to do that.
They'll take you know, chrome pieces off if they want to,
you know, the transmission, even exactly these things are are
definitely we'll call it looted for parts, but really they
own the vehicle. So I don't know if you can
call it looting or not, but they're they're they're stripped
(03:20):
of everything valuable, Like you said, you know, viable wheels
are valuable, tires are valuable. Um parts even components even
like axles and things like that, were engines. Um, here's
a good question. And stop me if I'm interrupting you. Okay,
here's a good question. Uh, why do we crush cars?
Here's the here's the the whole I guess the whole
(03:44):
moral of this story is that we crushed cars because
we like to make new cars. Um, they're recycled eventually,
and uh, well, you know, I want to get to
where they go after this, because that's really there's another
step in this beyond even the car crusher. Hum, that's
it's really important. And maybe boy dare I say it,
even maybe even cooler than a car crusher, but car
(04:06):
crushers are still cool. Yeah, I'll go with it. There's
a reason why we put them in this order. Yeah,
there's a reason we're talking about car crushers first. And
really that's kind of the the initial step in this
whole process, you know. And we talked about how they're crushed.
They're crushed down to ben Get this, a car can
be crushed down to nine inches thick, which you can
also watch on YouTube. Yes, yes, and that is really cool.
(04:28):
I think it's it's neat, it's it's slow. It happens
very slowly. But you've really got to kind of wrap
your head around what you're seeing in order to understand
how impressive that is, because you watch it happen, and
it just happens, and you know, they load another one
on and they crush another one right on top of it,
and it looks easy. It does look it looks so
easy that it doesn't it doesn't quite sink in what's happening.
(04:51):
That they're taking an entire automobile and making it flat
as a pancake right in front of your eyes within seconds,
and that that to me, is impressive. Yeah. We should
also tell a lot of people who've seen the films.
Most of my experience before doing podcast research here was
with the car crushers depicted in movies, and those are
kind of bail crushers, so they create a cube, but
(05:14):
far more common will be what Scott and I are
talking about, where it's crushed into like a sheet. Now,
I believe the cube ones. I believe they have to
have the engine, transmission axles, things like that removed because
those are some of the heavier items. You're crushing the
frame and the shell of the car, and those those
are so impressive to see that. I mean, have you
ever seen a car truckload of square cars headed down
(05:38):
the road? You know, they're all bailed together. I haven't
in a long long time because recently and I have
seen these. I've seen a lot of flattened cars. You know,
there's still the length of the car. They're all flattened
down to, Like we said, none most of them are
about a foot thick, and they're just piled one on
top of the other. You may see twenty or thirty
on the back of a big flatbed truck headed down
(05:58):
the road. Uh, you know they've been crushed by this
this hydraulic system that puts out three thousand pounds per
square inches. What they say, hey, that's again. Listen to
that number. Three thousand pounds per square inch is what
they're exerting on a car in order to flatten it.
And then do uh, do a rough estimate in your
head if you would, about how many square inches your
(06:20):
car is square, and then multiply that by three thousands. Amazing,
And if you're as ridiculous as I am this, this
is kind of dumb. But over the weekend, when when
I was watching some car crushing videos, I went out
to I was gonna wash my car, and I was
standing out there. I was by the back end of
the Monte Carlo, by the trunk, and I put my
(06:41):
hand on it. I just went I looked around, you know,
shift the eye, probably my neighbors already thinking really weird,
and then I just gave it a couple of pushes
just to see. I was trying to picture maybe the
springs moved if the tires weren't on it. Yeah, yeah,
I kind of bumped it a little bit, but if
the if the tires weren't on it, I thought, uh,
(07:02):
is there any way that I could do more than
make a dent? And it's it's just so strange to
see these things crumble so easily, crumple rather so easily.
And you know with these with this, I don't know
the style that makes like a pancake on multip'll call
it just a flat a flat vehicle. Um, what's what's
(07:22):
really kind of new about this is I think I mean,
in a lot of cases they do take off parts
that they can use the axles, the blocking things. But
I believe Ben that they can now crush engine blocks
with these things because they do eventually go to another machine.
They can handle items like that, and in the past
that wasn't true. I'm laughing because I could tell well,
(07:43):
we'll get through crushers still, Okay, We'll still hang on
to crushers for just another minute, just another minute. Um.
It does make sense because more than half of a
junct car is made from steel, usually on average, and
there's a compelling economic reason to recycle this because steel
(08:04):
in a per ton price is fairly profitable. Um. And
so if you can take a machine that was made
in the nineteen seventies and it's still an operation several
car crushers are, uh, then it's just all money off
the top man, Yeah, exactly. And that's that's another remarkable
thing about some of these car crushers is that you'll
find that a lot of them, as you mentioned, you know,
(08:25):
in the seventies, Um, they're they're getting up there in age,
and you know what, they're still just as tough as
they were the day they were built. Because these things
are built out of hardened steel. They have to be
you know, tougher than whatever they're crushing. They have to
be extremely um, just solid, solid machines that you know,
are well engineered, that you know they've they've they've they've
(08:47):
proven themselves in over decades of time just to be repairing.
I mean, you know, the hammers and things that they
used to to smash up the wheels of the grinding wheels.
Those are replaceable parts, those are consumables. But the machine
itself has to be able to withstand, you know, whether
because these things aren't inside there outside right, they're they're
massive and um, they have to be able to do
(09:08):
like I said, be be stronger than what they're crushing.
They have to you know, stand up under these tremendous forces. Um.
And just you know, the maintenance of them is important
as well. You know, of course they wouldn't last as
long as they do without maintenance. But um, overall, extremely
extremely tough. Because some of these are approaching, you know,
fifty years old. Yeah, and some of them are as
(09:28):
you would assume, gigantic. A lot of the older ones
are stationary, but from my understanding, more and more of
the newer ones are actually portable and uh, just just
for a quick step now Scott, and now we're talking
about this off of the air. Uh the oh no, wait,
I can't do it yet. We have to wait yet
(09:50):
because that's uh so we're coming up to. But you know,
if you want to look into if you're guessing the
price of something like this, yeah, I gotta tell you.
I found this to be somewhat reasonable for what you're getting.
I thought this was remarkably affordable if you're in the
market for a car crusher um Ballpark around a hundred fifty,
(10:11):
which I don't know, it seems all right. It seemed
like you would make an awful lot of money if
you were scrapping cars, you know, if you had a
service bringing vehicles to you and you know there you
were uh cemented in this this uh this system. You know,
you're you're somewhere in there where you had a supply
and you had someone to sell to and you know, etcetera.
It seems like this would would pay for itself off
a quick that's I was expecting like a million. Now
(10:36):
that's at the top of the line. That's not the
best one, good one, but that that will crush a car. Yeah,
oh man, And you can see there there's so many
different types. There's one really strange one that that I saw.
I say really strange. It was just unorthodox to me.
Where the car was pushed through. Uh this frame that
wasn't wasn't very large, and there's an operators standing by,
(10:58):
and then there are two play eights on either side,
like the walls, and they pushed down and they are
not large enough to crush an entire car, So you
move it through in segments. Makes sense, So you buy
a smaller unit and just make take a little bit
more labor, but eventually does the same job. Yeah, eventually
does the same job. But Scott, we've we've gone through
(11:19):
the steps. We've gone through the fact that the car
is stripped of everything remotely valuable. In some cases, they
can even crack the engine block now, so they may
leave that in if it's broken. We also need to mention,
of course, hazardous materials are removed, like you don't want
the battery in there when you crush it. And uh,
then the fuel tanks, you want to drain the fuel tanks.
(11:41):
There's a there's other safety procedures that they do along
the way, and then we get to the actual crushing. Now,
if it's a large operation. They may wait until they've
got a number of cars gutted and then turn on
the crushers so they can do this all at once,
and then once they've got it all crushed, everything's gone.
We just have these pancake piles of cars. We're not
(12:04):
done yet. Oh no, this is uh, like I said,
this is maybe to me, but I actually I think
it is more interesting to watch than the crusher. I think, yeah,
I believe just my opinion. I mean, other people have
differing but you want to tell them where they go
ben after the crushed, well, once they're crushed, especially if
you recycle. Uh, you can't use just a flat pancake car.
(12:28):
You have to put it. You have to somehow get
it into smaller pieces make it manageable. You have to
shred it. The car is shredded. Are you listening to this?
It's shredded. This is probably one of the cooler things
that I've ever seen, a car shredder. This is crazy
and and intensely efficient. It's incredibly efficient. And we're talking
(12:50):
about massive, massive machines right then. These are these are
the type of thing that will be featured on you know,
like those uh, massive structures or or Marvel. Yeah, exactly
one of those shows Ben, how are they typically measured
when they talk about um, this is this astounds me?
How are they measured when they when they talk about
(13:11):
the size of these things? Now you're not talking about tons, right, no,
not tons, but they do do that also. But what
are some of the more impressive figures that you'll you'll hear? Oh,
I don't know. Measurement in terms of acres maybe acres large,
that's right, it's it's measured in acres. That's how big
this machine is. And you know, you think it would
(13:32):
be something that's just you know, fed like you think
of your little office shredder. You know that you put
paper into or something like that, similar idea, and that
it has cams and gears that that destroy whatever goes inside,
but on cross cuts and everything. But imagine that on
such a scale that you can dump a vehicle that's
been flattened into it. And really really ponder this when
I tell you that they can put in sometimes as
(13:54):
many as four at a time, Yes, and it will
in a matter of minutes eat the cars. It looks
like that's the way I compare it. It looks like
it is eating these cars, and um. When when you
check these things out, what what you'll see is that
they'll take the crushed cars and they'll they'll die pretty
(14:19):
much digest them into these chunks that are about the
size of an average human face. And I'm gonna I'm
gonna correct you here because I've got a number here
that's dramatically different. What's that you know you said minutes? Right?
Oh wait, yeah, this is this that may have been
early on in different types of shredders, smaller shredders, some
(14:40):
of those shredders that they call the mega shredders, the
big ones, these huge shredders that you said bers. They
can take a car in and completely chew it up
in three to four seconds. That is crazy four seconds.
So even if they do six cars at a time,
then that's still not a in it correct correct. So
(15:02):
it's incredibly fast, faster than you think, really, and it
does it makes them into the size you know, it
takes a car, eats it and what comes out the
other side is um. But I think they described it
as like fist size pieces of metal, you know, shredded
different shapes and sizes, of course, but it fist size
is a good general rule for the size that they're
(15:23):
looking for. And one of the biggest shredders, if we
can talk about this one was located in Elkhart, Indiana,
owned by Sturgis Iron and Metal. Uh. This one had
an eight thousand pounds electric motor. The hammers spun at
one dred and seventy five miles per hour. One thing
(15:43):
that is different between a car shredder and the shredder
you may have in your home or your office is
that these things, these these belts that are turning that
are actually shredding the cars can be thought of like hammers. Yeah,
this hammer wheel that he's talking about is like a
drum that has great big metal protrusions all around it
(16:05):
and it just spins and they can back that up
and you know, make it run forward and backward the
belt that leads into it and uh, you know that
that will just slam into the car and just just
crushes it into oblivion and then it's shredded from that
point with disks and um. It's just it's an incredible
process that you can watch. But um, and it's all
very high tech as well. You know, there's an operator
that likens you know, you can watch these interviews with
(16:27):
people that run these things, and they say it's like
playing a video game, and it becomes that way. Now
they understand, you know, the danger of what they're doing.
They understand, you know, what's happening, and they really get
have a sense for, um, you know, just how dangerous
this machine could be. So they're very very careful about it.
But the controls are very much like a video game.
They're watching screens that monitor the processes. They of course
(16:50):
got a great view of what's happening, but at the
same time it's very dangerous too because you know, things
can be thrown out, you know, at bullet speed at them,
because this machine is really really churning in order to
devour cars at three to four seconds you know per car,
so um incredibly fast running machines. But um, imagine, just
(17:10):
let me just take for a second to think what
happens if you know the work. You know, someone on
the line gets there, you know, their their shirt sleeves
stuck in it. They've gotta be able to shut that
down quick, um, really quick, because you don't want to
be anywhere near those jaws when they're operating. And did
you just did you catch this little statistic that I
found incredibly interesting. Uh, the at least the shred or
(17:31):
in Indiana is so powerful that uh they have they
had to build it on special dampeners really to prevent
seismic vibrations. That you know what that sounds like a
stamping plant. Stamping plants are built with instead of imagining floors.
And this is the way you're talking about the dampeners.
I don't know what they were made of, but um
(17:52):
in a in a stamping plant where they have stamping
machines that that drive down from stories above to stamp
up panels in ours. If you imagine like a post,
a wooden post, imagine that post driven straight down to
the floor. So when you look at the top of
the floor, you see it almost looks like a parquet
floor with um. You know, the top you'll see eight
by eight pieces of wood or four by four pieces
(18:14):
of wood rather than planks like you would in a
normal wood floor. And that's because the wood floor goes deep,
deep into the ground and it absorbs it better that
way because it's individual pieces of wood. So they may
have a similar thing going with them, or maybe it
was on rubber dampers or whatever. But again the same
thing so that you know, it doesn't get into the
the underlaying rock structure, and well it could destroy the
(18:36):
building all around it. The machine could. So, UM, I
understand what you're talking about, but this is something that
was operating continually, twenty four hours a day, just churning
out these these uh these cars or destroying these cars. Rather,
I think it was shut down, wasn't it. Yeah, yeah,
that's we're I'm not completely sure, but I believe so
(18:56):
as well, because we had talked about this. There's a
there's the company at self I think went bankrupt in
two thousand eight or nine something like that. So, uh,
some of this information that you'll read online about it,
you know, you'll find some stuff about it being closed down.
The I think the entire steel works or iron works,
they're just yeah, exactly, but um still doesn't take away
from the impressive machine that they had there and and
(19:18):
there others like it. Yes, that's that is true. It's
but it's not the last of its free by any means. Uh.
We should also point out to any would be entrepreneurs, uh,
auto shredders are going to be more expensive than uh,
these car crushers. Were talking about just because of the
technology and the scale involved. Sure, and they were invented
(19:41):
in nineteen five. That's when the shredder, the car shredder
was really invented by Alton Newell, who was an engineer.
Um Um had his own company, his own shredding company,
and decided that this is a better way to do it,
because you know, up until this point, been the way
that they compacted cars and the way they recycled cars
was they would take them apart where they would they
would you know, take the individdle pieces off of them
(20:02):
and kind of cannibalize them, or you know, after that
was done, they would literally attack it with hammers and
axes and destroy the cars. And it would take sometimes
it would take a full day to dismantle or destroy
a car. Or they would simply take a large machine
like a like a tractor and it would just drive
over it again and again and again until it crushed it.
(20:23):
And you could see these old videos of them crushing
old cars or hitting them with axes and you know,
to take them down, and it was very labor intensive.
And that's when Alton, who owned the salvage yard, said,
you know, I think there's a better way. Let's automate
this whole thing, and from that point, you know, it's
just become incredible. I mean, we we shred papers with
similar type things. We uh. You know, it's a very
(20:45):
very simple version of what you you see happening at
the the auto salvage yards. But if you live anywhere
near one of these, it's it's worthwhile to take a
look at it. You want to go see it in action,
or go online and take a look at some of
these shredding videos. If you're afraid of getting nailed with
a fist sized chunk of metal, you can you can
check it out online. And for everyone who wonders about this,
(21:08):
I know I'm talking about the economic benefits, but there
are clearly environmental benefits as well. Automobiles are the most
recycled consumer product in the United States, Is that right?
I believe that because just the massive quantities that are
produced every day and then the massive quantities that are
destroyed every day. Yes, um, you know, imagine if we
(21:29):
were taking all those cars and just dumping them into
a landfill. That's enormous. And that's what we were doing
up until a certain point when I mentioned, you know,
the tractors, crushing cars. Those are just landfill material. Or
people would just abandon them out and you know, the
desert or you know, the the the what's now, what's
now the suburbs of cities, you know, to drive them
out somewhere and park them in the in the woods
(21:50):
and just leave them. That happened often. And um, you know,
so you've got these well piles of rusty junk laying
around and now you know this is this is it's
much more affordable for everybody if we continue to recycle
cars like this, you know, if they continue to use
these old cars to recycle them, because you know, it's
it's the cost of mining versus the cost of recycling,
(22:13):
and the recycling costs far outweighs the mining costs for
new materials on these things. The recycling costs is far
less than did I say the wrong way? I got
what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, something like that. So so
there there we there we have it. You got you
got anything else? I do? Yes, I do? And this,
you know, I have something that is a tremendous waste
(22:34):
of time. And by that, I mean it's so interesting
that I think you're gonna end up sitting online watching
these little short videos again and again and again, and
uh this, I promise our car stuff listeners, this will
not disappoint because there's a little something for everybody here. Okay,
there's a place where you can go online and all
(22:55):
you have to do is type in into Google Search,
type type in watch it shred y, watch it shred Now.
The interesting thing about this is that when you do that,
it takes you to UM a site called s s I,
which is Shredding Systems Incorporated, and they have done this
really awesome thing. They've made short video clips of their product,
(23:17):
which are shredders shredding anything and everything that you can imagine.
And this is often listener requests. It's not just know
these are These are people that that right in and say,
in fact, cars are very a very small part of
this site. They they call in and they you know,
they've got this this machine that they call the Monster,
(23:37):
which is like fifteen feet tall, eight horsepower driving these
shredding um looks like cams that destroy these things whatever
you put in there. And they've got other shredders as well.
They're very specialized, you know, for what they can handle,
and some can handle cars. Some can't, some can handle metal,
others can't. You know, some are for bio biological material,
(23:59):
and you know it's set et cetera. You know, on
and on. But they've got this incredible list of things
that you can watch shred and it sounds like you've
been there. Yeah, I checked. I checked it out a
little bit because I got there actually from checking out
will It Blend, which is a similar idea where they
just where there's a group of people who put things
like cameras and stuff into blenders, and so I had
(24:24):
seen some of this and I was just astounded because
I actually saw it before we did a new research
for the shredding and the crushing episode that we're doing today.
I was just amazed because it was actually the first
time I had seen a vehicle shredder. Okay, now, this,
the vehicle shreder is pretty awesome. I gotta tell you.
There are some things that I may have found even
(24:44):
more interesting to watch being shredded on this will at
shred site than a car. And I don't know why
that is. I mean, it was It's it's very very
entertaining to watch car being just chewed up and into nothing.
But do you have like a top three. I've got
more than top three. I can quickly go through and
I can describe in d till. But you know if
some of these you'll find more exciting than others. So
these are Scott's favorite. I gotta say one of my
(25:05):
favorite ones. I think a fifty five gallon drum. Oh yeah, yeah.
If it catches when this this machine they throw in
this this hopper and as it kind of bounces around,
they see these massive cams just you know, just churning
waiting for something to catch. And you know it's it's
a round object, a big fifty five gallon drum, steel drum.
As soon as it catches a corner, it just pulls
(25:26):
it right and sucks it right in and it's gone.
It does. It bounces around until finally an edge catches,
and then and then it sucks it right in. But
you will not believe the speed that fifty gallon drum
disappears in this thing and this hopper. It gives you
an idea of just how dangerous this thing is. If
you know, somewhere tragically or to fall inside this thing.
(25:47):
I can't imagine what would happen, well, I can't. I
can imagine what would happen now some of the other
things that they throw in there, and these are things
that you would never think could be shredded. A piano,
then yeah, they can throw a piano in there, and
it makes quick work. The key to this whole thing
seemed to be if it can catch an edge, it
just continues to pull it in and that's it. There's
(26:07):
no escape, none at all. Um a plastic boat which
goes away quickly, very quickly. Bicycles, soccer balls which are
entertaining to watch because they bounced all over the place
and then they just popped one after the other. And
when they do this they do thirty or forty at
a time. They've got materials, you know, like use sports
(26:28):
equipment that they need to shred. For the material, um,
bowling balls and pins. Then you can throw bowling balls
in this thing and it will shred them and what
comes out the other side looks like bits of ceramic.
But to see it crushing bowling balls, that's impressive, um amazing.
I mean again, thirty or forty or fifty of these
(26:48):
at a time, it is frightening, as when you think
about how heavy bowling ball is and how just how
tough that surfaces. I can't even imagine putting a chisel
against it and hitting with a hammer and making that
do anything. Amazing, something I didn't think they could do.
What was it? Engine blocks? They can throw full engine
blocks into this thing and it will chip away at them.
(27:08):
It takes a little longer. The sound is deafening, but
you know these big, huge cams that that grind this
thing apart. They just kind of chip away at it
until eventually there's nothing left. It's incredible to watch. Uh,
steel rebar, which is also oppressive. Couches, Um, let's see
tractor tires. These enormous tractor tires just shredded into nothing,
(27:30):
you know, quickly. Couches I've mentioned couches, but other wooden furniture. UM, refrigerators.
Then you can dump a refrigerator into there. That makes sense.
It's still weirds me out, though, I'm still kind of
stuck on the bowling balls are The bowling balls are
probably one of the stranger things I I just I
can't even begin to tell you the odd things that
you can put in here. But there's a huge list.
You can search it and you can suggest things for them.
(27:53):
Shred the only thing I don't like about this site,
this little thing is sometimes you'll you'll get one of
these that they've done like a little skit. And I
gotta tell you, I'm not a fan of the skits
set up kind of a setup like you know, the
guy's out right in his lawnmower and it doesn't quite work,
and uh you know, so he gets mad at it
and tips it over. The next thing you see is
it dumped in the shredder. Things like that. But um,
(28:14):
I just like it when they just get straight to
the shredding, let's see it. Also, those hammers have to
be replaced nearly every day, go right, which is no surprise. Yeah, yeah,
I guess so if you've seen auto lines in process
when they're machining engine blocks and things, they have to
replace the cutting material often, if not you know, hourly.
Uh so the hammers I can imagine we're out quickly too.
(28:37):
So if you live near one of these outfits and
you're feeling charitable and what, you still work well enough
to be able to hear our podcast, right, and you
want to send us some photos of either shredders or crushers,
we would love to check them out. You can post
them on our Facebook. You can send them to us
on Twitter. You can also read up on our article
(29:01):
about car crushers on how stuff works dot com, and
you can send us an email directly at car stuff
at how stuff work dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The how Stuff Works iPhone
(29:23):
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.