2 ms·

I slowly hitchhiked from Europe to West Africa in 2007 and from Western Sahara on, my drivers were all French people driving some old car down to sell for a lit

I slowly hitchhiked from Europe to West Africa in 2007 and from Western Sahara on, my drivers were all French people driving some old car down to sell for a little quick cash. But already by that time Senegal had said enough already, and so drivers had to head for Mali or Burkina Faso instead. I wonder if the violence in those countries in recent years has put a damper on the used car trade, or if they too banned such informal imports.

ggm 3y ago
ABC news here in Australia has a story about Tonga drowning in 30,000 broken used cars, which has motivated an intervention to get a local crushing plant working so the metals can be sent back to Japan for recycling, and to get productive land back into use. Small pacific island economies are the end of the road in every sense. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-19/how-tonga-plans-to-recycle-its-mountain-of-scrap-cars/102614772 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-19/how-tonga-pla... Africa has different problems. Friends had to leave a Morris Minor van in the desert, there were no UK conforming spare parts, if they'd driven a french car or truck almost anything would have worked because metric. That was a few decades ago but they said the landscape was littered with broken cromwell, challenger and other tanks, from the desert campaigns. The rate of rain is low enough these metal hulks last many decades.
- repiret 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37565385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37565385 One of the solutions proposed there is to set the import duty high enough to fund disposal of (at least) one car.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  I'm surprised removing scrap metal is that complicated/expensive. Tonga has a container port, and I'm guessing they tend to receive full containers and send back out empties. Some places find ways to take advantage of this, e.g. Canada exports most of it's bean/pulse crop in bags to Asia in containers instead of bulk carriers. Wasn't that long ago we did the same with scrap metal (maybe still do). Certainly a crusher/cuber helps maximize density, but a torch or other cutting tools can go a long way to save space. And you're mainly paying for weight anyway as the empty is a sunk cost.
toyg 3y ago
> drivers were all French people driving some old car down The peugeotard way is basically a tradition stretching back to the '60s; for many, it's just an excuse to have an epic road trip. I remember reading about it in the '90s in an excellent Italian book, Vado verso il Capo - 13.000 km attraverso l'Africa (Feltrinelli, 1996) by Sergio Ramazzotti.

ggm 3y ago

ABC news here in Australia has a story about Tonga drowning in 30,000 broken used cars, which has motivated an intervention to get a local crushing plant working so the metals can be sent back to Japan for recycling, and to get productive land back into use. Small pacific island economies are the end of the road in every sense. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-19/how-tonga-plans-to-recycle-its-mountain-of-scrap-cars/102614772 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-19/how-tonga-pla... Africa has different problems. Friends had to leave a Morris Minor van in the desert, there were no UK conforming spare parts, if they'd driven a french car or truck almost anything would have worked because metric. That was a few decades ago but they said the landscape was littered with broken cromwell, challenger and other tanks, from the desert campaigns. The rate of rain is low enough these metal hulks last many decades.

repiret 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37565385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37565385 One of the solutions proposed there is to set the import duty high enough to fund disposal of (at least) one car.
Scoundreller 3y ago
I'm surprised removing scrap metal is that complicated/expensive. Tonga has a container port, and I'm guessing they tend to receive full containers and send back out empties. Some places find ways to take advantage of this, e.g. Canada exports most of it's bean/pulse crop in bags to Asia in containers instead of bulk carriers. Wasn't that long ago we did the same with scrap metal (maybe still do). Certainly a crusher/cuber helps maximize density, but a torch or other cutting tools can go a long way to save space. And you're mainly paying for weight anyway as the empty is a sunk cost.

toyg 3y ago

> drivers were all French people driving some old car down The peugeotard way is basically a tradition stretching back to the '60s; for many, it's just an excuse to have an epic road trip. I remember reading about it in the '90s in an excellent Italian book, Vado verso il Capo - 13.000 km attraverso l'Africa (Feltrinelli, 1996) by Sergio Ramazzotti.