Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
That's something that I haven't seen in an awfully long time. Anyone still have them rumbling around?
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Oh Yeah. Lots of them. Matter of fact. Had one parked at our Court House yesterday in the middle of town. He had a full load. I could see legs stick out the top. 
Not the best smell.
ddj
Not the best smell.ddj
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Thanks - that's exactly how I remember them from my days in NW Iowa as a kid. Over here in East Central Iowa they mustn't ever have critters keel over.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
i hated those growing up 'poor' in Texas! Either no AC in the car or 'recycle' function so when you got stuck behind one on the highway on a 100* day you knew it.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Originally Posted by 5sdad
That's something that I haven't seen in an awfully long time. Anyone still have them rumbling around?
When you have a farm w/cows etc., you will have a rendering service.. I just wish they'd get there a bit sooner at times... Those rotting carcasses in a July sun are NO fun to have your nose get a whiff of, trust me..
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
When I was in HS we used to see a lot of semi's hauling loads of chicken guts from the processors over to the east of us.
The trucks would start out from the processor okay with the trailer full to the top, but covered with canvas. But as they headed down the highway the sun would start warming things up, and the load would start fermenting.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
The trucks would start out from the processor okay with the trailer full to the top, but covered with canvas. But as they headed down the highway the sun would start warming things up, and the load would start fermenting.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Had a truck go over a railroad bridge then have to slam on the brakes for a stoplight at the bottom. The load 'shifted' over the top of the trailer, filled the area between the cab and trailer full of 'junk' and all the fats and blood covered the road. There were a handful of wrecks immediately thereafter as people were trying to stop and couldn't due to the slick fatty road.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Guys around here quit using them when they started charging to pick up the corpses. They all have dead pits now. Some tell me not to shoot coyotes near there so they will eat them. :>(
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
I grew up in the middle of feedyard country in the Texas Panhandle....one of the largest feedyards in the country was 3-5 miles outside of town. Montford (now JB Swift) plant was about 20 miles away as well....as well as rendering plant/tannery. Gutwagons or deadwagons were pretty common site.
The smell of money.
The smell of money.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Originally Posted by ScoutmasterRick
But as they headed down the highway the sun would start warming things up, and the load would start fermenting.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Originally Posted by yeselk
Guys around here quit using them when they started charging to pick up the corpses. They all have dead pits now. Some tell me not to shoot coyotes near there so they will eat them. :>(
A cow died in my south pasture last year and I didn't even know it until I found the skeleton while walking in the woods. I saw her grazing the previous week, so she couldn't have been dead long. When I found the carcass there wasn't anything left but the bones, and most of the ribs bones had been eaten half way down to the spine.
The coyotes had cleaned things up so fast the carcass didn't even have time to work up a good stink.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Originally Posted by Redneck
Originally Posted by ScoutmasterRick
But as they headed down the highway the sun would start warming things up, and the load would start fermenting.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
By the time the trucks reached town stuff would have starting swelling and bubbling up over the rim of the trailer and dropping in the road.
The visual and olfactory experience was quite spectacular.
Well if it makes you feel any better I just reached into my lunch sack and pulled out...a can of chicken soup.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
years back, a friend of mine, living up in Scranton PA, invented a truck body that would contain the sort of stuff going to the rendering plant.
He made millions off that dang truck idea.
He made millions off that dang truck idea.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
A lot of towns have regulations that require the trucks to be covered. You might see one and not recognize it for what it is...provided you're upwind.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
While going to a benchrest match one day in North Carolina we came on a spot on the interstate where a semi had dumped an entire load of chicken entrails on the interstate. There were buzzards with the dry heaves on the shoulder of the road.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
The old rendering plant we had here locally shut down some years back. Have a friend that worked there for a few years as a truck driver/mechanic. He told me he has had vehicles stopped next to his truck at traffic lights actually run the red light to get away from the smell. Said, too, sometimes in the summer when he stopped for a bite of lunch it was common for the restaurant employees to come flying out yelling at him to get his stinking truck out of their parking lot, you're running all of our customers off.
A joke he use to tell about how you could tell if someone worked around a rendering plant was if they moved their sandwich around in circle's and figure eight pattern,...he claimed that's how they kept the flies off between bites. Said the smell really didn't bother him all that much. I sorta figured as a former 101st AB Army cook, he'd had probably smelled worse.
A joke he use to tell about how you could tell if someone worked around a rendering plant was if they moved their sandwich around in circle's and figure eight pattern,...he claimed that's how they kept the flies off between bites. Said the smell really didn't bother him all that much. I sorta figured as a former 101st AB Army cook, he'd had probably smelled worse.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/12/10
Out here in the big ranch country seems like we never see rendering trucks/plants. Last weekend it was roundup activity for a big ranch on the San Augustin (256 sections of land) and in a break from the branding and nut cuttin I noticed what looked like buzzards and crows on a mound way off in the distance. That would be their "bone pile" where cattle that succomb or are killed nearby are dragged and left. With coyotes, wolves, bald eagles, buzzards and crows roaming far and wide (and who knows what else?) the bodies are soon reduced to bones. Seems better to me.
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/14/10
Originally Posted by yeselk
Guys around here quit using them when they started charging to pick up the corpses. They all have dead pits now. Some tell me not to shoot coyotes near there so they will eat them. :>(
A lot of guys in Pa. are composting dead stock now. The rules got real tight on rendering after they found BSE in the US and prices went thru the roof, if they'll even take the carcass.
Dale
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/14/10
Not as common as they used to be, not as much livestock in certain parts of Iowa.
Western Iowa still has its fine cattle rending trucks!
Nothing says summer like driving a Binder with no AC and being behind the rendering truck.......
Western Iowa still has its fine cattle rending trucks!
Nothing says summer like driving a Binder with no AC and being behind the rendering truck.......
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/14/10
We had them in the city too, for waste frying oil, meat scraps and dead animals you might not think of.
As a HS freshman I worked at a local veterinarian. We accumulated dog and cat carcasses in a row of chest freezers in a garage attached to the back of the facility. Most of these had been "put to sleep" and the rest had died of illness in our care.
Late one Hot summer day, when I was the only hand working, I was called to the front and told to open the garage door for the rendering truck - I had not experienced this before. I was also told to turn off the ventilating fan - it was a huge fan over the garage door that pushed fresh air throughout our kennels.
That loaded-all-day-in-the-sun rendering truck got backed up to the garage door before I could get back there to turn off the fan. The stench was pumped throughout the whole facility as only a huge powerful fan could have done it!
The office staff and customers vacated the premises pronto! The stench was so putrid, many of the dogs were barfing in their cages!
As a HS freshman I worked at a local veterinarian. We accumulated dog and cat carcasses in a row of chest freezers in a garage attached to the back of the facility. Most of these had been "put to sleep" and the rest had died of illness in our care.
Late one Hot summer day, when I was the only hand working, I was called to the front and told to open the garage door for the rendering truck - I had not experienced this before. I was also told to turn off the ventilating fan - it was a huge fan over the garage door that pushed fresh air throughout our kennels.
That loaded-all-day-in-the-sun rendering truck got backed up to the garage door before I could get back there to turn off the fan. The stench was pumped throughout the whole facility as only a huge powerful fan could have done it!
The office staff and customers vacated the premises pronto! The stench was so putrid, many of the dogs were barfing in their cages!
Re: Rendering Truck - 05/14/10
Got a rendering plant in GB - right off 41. Sanimax.
One of my vendors was checking a trailer - opened the door and lost his lunch. BAD smell. Called me to tell me he didn't have enough coffee beans in the truck (spread them on the floors of Van trailers to get rid of smells) and it had to go to the shop.
Told him "be glad it's 40 degrees out and not 85"
Checked the movement history - sure enough, the prior delivery was to the rendering plant. No way Proctor and Gamble was gonna load that oderous trailer....
One of my vendors was checking a trailer - opened the door and lost his lunch. BAD smell. Called me to tell me he didn't have enough coffee beans in the truck (spread them on the floors of Van trailers to get rid of smells) and it had to go to the shop.
Told him "be glad it's 40 degrees out and not 85"
Checked the movement history - sure enough, the prior delivery was to the rendering plant. No way Proctor and Gamble was gonna load that oderous trailer....