lakeroadster
When in doubt... build hell-for-stout!
Ever heard the term "That would gag a Buzzard, on a gut wagon?" Been there... done that.
I'm retired. But I worked for a company for 18 years that built rendering equipment.
For those that don't know, rendering equipment processes all the guts , hooves, hides, skulls, bones, feathers, hog hair (you get the picture) from meat packing plants, as well as any dead animals that can't be run through a meat packing plant or that come from dairy's, farms, etc. The guts, dead animals, etc would be brought to the rendering plant in semi truck dump tilt trailers, full of the stuff I previously mentioned and dump the trailers into huge bins that were in the ground. These bins were the size of swimming pools, and they had augers in the bottom of them that conveyed the materials into "size reduction" equipment.
This size reduction equipment basically ground up everything into chunks, about the size of a human thumb. Then that ground material was cooked in steam heated vessels, then separated in a press, where you ended up with fat, and meal.
See photo below.
It's rumored Jimmy Hoffa went through one of these plants.
I didn't work full time in the plants, I designed the equipment the plants used. So when equipment broke down, sometimes I'd have to go figure out what went wrong, in order to get the plant back up and running.
I recall going to California and they were dumping the semi loads of guts in a parking lot because until we could get the plant back up and running... what else are you going to do with semi loads of guts and dead animals? I saw workers that were on break, eating donuts and drinking coffee, and the workers were sitting on bloated hog carcasses. Just another day for these fellas.
When we were ready to leave the plant you would take off all your clothes, put them in a garbage bag and throw them away, take a shower, put on new clothes, get in the rental car and head to the airport. People would still smell you coming. The rental car folks hated us.
I'd get home and my dog thought I was 170 lbs. of walking Purina Dog Chow... his nose was stuck on me like flies on a rib roast.
Regardless of what time of year it was... it was rough duty. But in the heat of the summer... well... I often questioned my sanity. There was just no way to get the smell to go away. It was in your pores. You just had to basically sweat it out.
Oh, for a short time we also built machines for municipal waste treatment plants when they were trying to cook human waste, then spread it on agricultural fields. They called that "Bio Solids".
Our Field Service guys were the highest paid guys in the entire company. Much respect to those fellas.
The worst thing I ever smelled though... was a raw material bin full of rotted chicken guts. It was bright yellow, looked like French's mustard.
My main focus was designing the continuous cookers. The largest I designed weighed 350,000 lbs. Most shipped by rail, sometimes though, they would ship over the road. See photo below.
I'm retired. But I worked for a company for 18 years that built rendering equipment.
For those that don't know, rendering equipment processes all the guts , hooves, hides, skulls, bones, feathers, hog hair (you get the picture) from meat packing plants, as well as any dead animals that can't be run through a meat packing plant or that come from dairy's, farms, etc. The guts, dead animals, etc would be brought to the rendering plant in semi truck dump tilt trailers, full of the stuff I previously mentioned and dump the trailers into huge bins that were in the ground. These bins were the size of swimming pools, and they had augers in the bottom of them that conveyed the materials into "size reduction" equipment.
This size reduction equipment basically ground up everything into chunks, about the size of a human thumb. Then that ground material was cooked in steam heated vessels, then separated in a press, where you ended up with fat, and meal.
See photo below.
It's rumored Jimmy Hoffa went through one of these plants.
I didn't work full time in the plants, I designed the equipment the plants used. So when equipment broke down, sometimes I'd have to go figure out what went wrong, in order to get the plant back up and running.
I recall going to California and they were dumping the semi loads of guts in a parking lot because until we could get the plant back up and running... what else are you going to do with semi loads of guts and dead animals? I saw workers that were on break, eating donuts and drinking coffee, and the workers were sitting on bloated hog carcasses. Just another day for these fellas.
When we were ready to leave the plant you would take off all your clothes, put them in a garbage bag and throw them away, take a shower, put on new clothes, get in the rental car and head to the airport. People would still smell you coming. The rental car folks hated us.
I'd get home and my dog thought I was 170 lbs. of walking Purina Dog Chow... his nose was stuck on me like flies on a rib roast.
Regardless of what time of year it was... it was rough duty. But in the heat of the summer... well... I often questioned my sanity. There was just no way to get the smell to go away. It was in your pores. You just had to basically sweat it out.
Oh, for a short time we also built machines for municipal waste treatment plants when they were trying to cook human waste, then spread it on agricultural fields. They called that "Bio Solids".
Our Field Service guys were the highest paid guys in the entire company. Much respect to those fellas.
The worst thing I ever smelled though... was a raw material bin full of rotted chicken guts. It was bright yellow, looked like French's mustard.
My main focus was designing the continuous cookers. The largest I designed weighed 350,000 lbs. Most shipped by rail, sometimes though, they would ship over the road. See photo below.
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