Post by Far Rider on May 2, 2006 12:34:00 GMT -8
At one time I worked in a place where they dealt in scrap metal, junk cars, recycled paper, magazines, and cardboard.
This was my weekend job and if I wasn't needed at home I would sometimes work during the week after school.
What you would do is climb up on top of a large oak table in front of a baling machine, probably 8-10 feet tall. You would stack whatever material you were going to send to the paper plant into the top of the baling machine, and you sort of had to be careful about how you did it so the bale didn't fall apart. You capped the top and bottom of the bale with cardboard to help it stay together. Once you got the baling machine pretty much full, you would compress the bale as much as you could, although the machine had an automatic stop. Then you'd open the sides, and while someone fed wires to you from the back side of the baler you'd tie the wires around the bale. You had to be careful how you tied them because if the wire broke it could take your eye out.
It took about 15 minutes to make a paper bale in this baler. The paper bale was maybe 4-5 times the size of a hay bale and weighed something like 1000 lbs., or so I was told.
Once the bale was tied and the pressure released, I placed a big ass hand truck in front of the baler, hooked the top of the bale with a meat hook, and pulled the bale down onto the truck. You had to be careful the bale didn't land on you - a couple of times it came down on the hand truck and kept going. I don't know what would have happened if it would have landed on you but it might have broken something.
If you got the bale onto the truck okay, you would pick up the bale like you would a wheelbarrow, and, getting a running start up a ramp to a loading dock (usually with another kid helping you) and wheel it into a semi trailer. The ramp, dock, and trailer was probably about 150 feet altogether.
You'd load trucks 8 hours a day, just like that, for a dollar an hour. I was 14 years old, and probably weighed about 100 lbs.
I don't know how we did it without illegals.
This was my weekend job and if I wasn't needed at home I would sometimes work during the week after school.
What you would do is climb up on top of a large oak table in front of a baling machine, probably 8-10 feet tall. You would stack whatever material you were going to send to the paper plant into the top of the baling machine, and you sort of had to be careful about how you did it so the bale didn't fall apart. You capped the top and bottom of the bale with cardboard to help it stay together. Once you got the baling machine pretty much full, you would compress the bale as much as you could, although the machine had an automatic stop. Then you'd open the sides, and while someone fed wires to you from the back side of the baler you'd tie the wires around the bale. You had to be careful how you tied them because if the wire broke it could take your eye out.
It took about 15 minutes to make a paper bale in this baler. The paper bale was maybe 4-5 times the size of a hay bale and weighed something like 1000 lbs., or so I was told.
Once the bale was tied and the pressure released, I placed a big ass hand truck in front of the baler, hooked the top of the bale with a meat hook, and pulled the bale down onto the truck. You had to be careful the bale didn't land on you - a couple of times it came down on the hand truck and kept going. I don't know what would have happened if it would have landed on you but it might have broken something.
If you got the bale onto the truck okay, you would pick up the bale like you would a wheelbarrow, and, getting a running start up a ramp to a loading dock (usually with another kid helping you) and wheel it into a semi trailer. The ramp, dock, and trailer was probably about 150 feet altogether.
You'd load trucks 8 hours a day, just like that, for a dollar an hour. I was 14 years old, and probably weighed about 100 lbs.
I don't know how we did it without illegals.
