Dirty Jobs

I watched a program last night that I have grown to like. It's called “Dirty Jobs” and it's where a guy will do your dirty job for the day. He has done everything from moving houses to sexing alligators. Now I don't know a whole lot about sexing an alligator, but I bet you have to talk real sweet to them before you go any further. And no I am not doing that as my next job!

Anyway last night they had sugar cane processing and I watched with interest as I once worked a “campaign ” at the sugar-beet processing plant in Iowa. Don't ask me why it was called a campaign, but it was. Watching the show made for some old memories. I was hired to load trucks out full of processed sugar, but we also did fill-in work when someone failed to show. I picked out rocks before beets went to the knives to switching a railroad crane and hooking/unhooking rail cars.

So hang on. I will write one topic a night till everyone yells “Stop passing all that sugar” By the way, I don't put sugar on or in anything that I eat after working there.

The plant was owned by Crystal Sugar and processed beet sugar. These thing were trucked in from all over and the campaign went well into February to mid March. Trucks would be seen traveling up and down the highways, as fast as they could. The fields were all around the Iowa plant and reached well into Minnesota. So they did not wast time on the highway.

What most people didn't notice about the trucks was that they had massive air breathers and oil coolers sticking out the engine compartment side. These where much bigger then you would see on the big over-the-road trucks. The reason for this was the trucks never stopped to be tuned off. Pulling into and out of the fields was the reason for the large air filtering system, plus while they where at the plant, there would be a lot of dust when they unloaded.

The reason for the big external oil cooler was even more interesting. Keep in mind, these trucks never stopped except for fuel. I am betting they where never turned off then and just filled while loading beets in the field. The real reason they had this big external oil-cooler's was that the truck was tipped over on it's side to unload. For some reason they needed a large capacity system and I guess it would not fit inside. Because the motor was running while unloading they needed an external system that pumped oil to the engine as it tilted over to its side. Thus an externally driven oil pumping system was attached to the side of the chassis.

Once the truck entered the yard, it was scaled for weight and sent to a large steel ramp system. There would be one guy there and once the truck was on the stall ramps, the driver and the other would attach big clamps to the side and physically clamp it down. They would back off and the one would run the control system. The ramp was on a pivoting thimble, thus they would roll the whole truck over and dump beets out the other side into a water bath system.

I once had the job to stand up on a bridgework across from the truck and using a water cannon, shoot the stuck beets out of the truck. Once emptied the truck was rotated back, unhooked and off it would go. It would take 5 minutes at the most to unload a semi-load of sugar beets.

Gunning for beets was a great job except when the wind blew in Jan or February. One night I was selected to go out there. I remember that it was bitterly cold and the wind was howling. Being in need of the job at the time, I hung my head and started the walk to the ramps. Just thinking of the wind blowing with that cold Iowa air made me want to go home. But to hang onto a fire hose shooting water at beets didn't seem to be a job path I wanted to have. I remember going back to school would be a nice option right now,as I didn't want to be out there. Like I said just as I was outside and heading for the ramps, the foreman raced up and told me to go back inside. The guy showed up and I wasn't needed. I never meet the guy who was late, but if I had, I would have purchased a beer for him when we got off work that night. As it turned out I may have had the beer in his memory.

Later