8 ms·

The Longest Conveyor Belt

215 points by NewHatMatt 12y ago

gboudrias 12y ago
Not much to add because the article doesn't say much, but I do love these feats of engineering. Those are pretty much 10 times as long as I thought they would be. Amazing.
- alelefant 12y ago
  The colors speak for themselves. ;) It is amazing how long that is. My only experience with a belt was working at Walgreens on warehouse truck days. Even our 60 foot belt continually had product falling off of it. I wonder what kind of oversight is done to make sure the items stay on it.
  - guelo 12y ago
    None, that's why you can see the phosphate spillage from space.
    - YokoZar 12y ago
      Still, it seems a little counterintuitive that it's not worth putting up an edge or something.
      - refurb 12y ago
        If it's crushed rock, i'll bet a lot of the spillage is dust and small rocks. After a few years it adds up!
      - kijin 12y ago
        If they poured crushed rock directly onto the belt, not much would be left after only a few kilometers, what with all the curves, slopes, and vibration. The belt will also be damaged beyond repair if you keep rubbing rock against it. So they probably put the rock in boxes and put the boxes on the conveyor belt. The tiny guardrails on either side should be enough to keep the boxes on the belt. Small pieces might spill over if the boxes aren't covered, but most of the cargo will arrive intact.
        tlb 12y ago
        How would you get the boxes back to the beginning?
        YokoZar 12y ago
        Hang em on the bottom of the conveyer belt!
        saganus 12y ago
        Well, you put another conveyor belt going in the other direction of course. Then you will have the TWO longest conveyor belts in the world. Ka-ching! [Edit: Typo]
        bcoates 12y ago
        Re-use them for shipping out the finished product, so they become someone else's problem.
        garrettgrimsley 12y ago
        They don't have it in boxes. There are also no guardrails. You might be looking at the conveyor belt in the picture with trees. That's not the Bou Craa belt. Check out this video of a 10.5km limestone conveyor belt in China [0]. Notice the rollers have a tilt to them? I found a better photo of the belt itself on PBS. [1] if you look on the left hand side of the photo you can make out a cylindrical object beneath the belt. That is the roller, it has the a tilt to it, just like the Chinese belt. Any vibration will result in the load gathering toward the bottom the the belt. Most of what we see on the ground is small particles that are swept off of the belt by wind (Used to live near a port and a concrete factory. Lovely air quality, S&W Ready Mix.) [0] http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5TN_H_C4o http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5TN_H_C4o [1] http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/12/21/conveyer_slideshow.jpg http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/12/21/...
  - mc32 12y ago
    I'm not sure, but I would guess they could be either have V-shaped x-section or have sag in the middle to avoid having the material fall off the edges.
AceJohnny2 12y ago
The coordinates listed for the single longest conveyer belt are a little bit off. Here's the start: https://goo.gl/maps/X2jg8 https://goo.gl/maps/X2jg8 And here's the end: https://goo.gl/maps/n0wvJ https://goo.gl/maps/n0wvJ (is there a way to get coordinates out of the new Maps?) And while I'm at it, a direct link for the longest combined conveyer belt: https://goo.gl/maps/3kz4s https://goo.gl/maps/3kz4s Pity, no streetview :p
- maxmcd 12y ago
  Looks like a decimal version of the lat/lng are available in the urls of the links once clicked.
- frewsxcv 12y ago
  re: coordinates Right click on map -> "What's here" -> look in the box under the search bar
Schwolop 12y ago
This reminds me of one Rio Tinto executive's dismissal of their $70M dollar purchase of a set of autonomous Komatsu haul trucks as "a very expensive reconfigurable conveyor belt".
- patdennis 12y ago
  For those of you who, like me, didn't know that autonomous mining trucks existed, here's a video of them in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE
  - robmcm 12y ago
    For those who have YouTube blocked at work: http://www.komatsu.com.au/AboutKomatsu/Technology/Pages/AHS.aspx http://www.komatsu.com.au/AboutKomatsu/Technology/Pages/AHS....
gk1 12y ago
From the homepage: > "On 15th September 2013, the ConveyorBeltGuide has been online for 10 years." Wow, that is some serious dedication. Assuming there are no ulterior motives--and I don't see evidence of any--it's wonderful to see someone so dedicated to sharing such intricate knowledge with anyone who's interested. And it's not abandoned, either; the disclaimer page notes that all videos on the site have been updated to HTML 5.
- 1_player 12y ago
  That's what I miss the most from pre-Web 2.0 Internet, the Geocities era: there were a lot of small and manually curated sites (as opposed to news aggregators and SEO spam sites) on any kind of topic. Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it.
  - greyfade 12y ago
    > Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it. Mostly because the Wikipedians won't even allow it (whether due to a lack of references or because it's not "relevant-" or "notable-enough") in the first place.
    - 1_player 12y ago
      And for a good reason: your grandfather's recollection of WWII, for example, has no place in an encyclopedia, but it's surely more interesting and possibly instructive than reading about it from a history book. I'm saddened we're losing this.
      - girvo 12y ago
        It doesn't have a place in an encyclopedia, for sure, but I posit that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It was supposed to be, and ostensibly started as one, but the amount of content that gets placed into it (and then removed by the mods...) shows that a sizable amount of Wikipedia users use it as a "knowledge repository" instead, which I think is subtly different. I mean, I wish we could collate the entire set of human knowledge into one place, however Wikipedia says that it doesn't want to be that place. The thing is, when you've already got 100,000 word treatises on Sailor Moon due to some Admin/Mod having that as his/her pet topic, it smacks of elitism, favoritism and hypocrisy.
bhhaskin 12y ago
Imagine being lost in the middle of nowhere. Then all of a sudden, conveyor belt.
- baddox 12y ago
  I'd probably hop on. It has to go somewhere, after all. Unless it's the world's largest circular conveyor belt.
  - beachstartup 12y ago
    i would try to follow it, but i would definitely not hop on. especially if it's carrying rocks. nothing good happens to rocks on a conveyor belt.
    - ertdfgcb 12y ago
      Something tells me a 35 km conveyor belt is moving slowly enough to give you plenty of time to hop off before the big crushing thing.
      - saalweachter 12y ago
        I think you're probably right, but devil's advocating it, the height of the conveyor belt could vary, and sometimes be high enough off the ground that you couldn't safely jump off. If the run-up to the limekiln at the end of the conveyor belt is elevated for a long enough stretch, you might not realize the point at which you should jump off until it's too late.
      - prawn 12y ago
        Likely true for those longer ones but the site notes a 54 km/h conveyor belt in Germany. That could be a bit risky...
        marssaxman 12y ago
        Oh, my. Suddenly I want to go find one of these things and hitch a ride on it.
erjiang 12y ago
I shouldn't be surprised, but the second was already mapped in OpenStreetMap,[0] and I've now added the first.[1] Unfortunately, the default renderer doesn't know how to draw a line of "man_made=conveyor_belt"... [0] http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202757736 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202757736 [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278131952 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278131952
elwell 12y ago
the phosphate trail the wind blew on the ground: http://goo.gl/maps/j9wnh http://goo.gl/maps/j9wnh
bigd 12y ago
I always wonder what would have happened if humanity had invested in conveyor belts instead of cars and roads for the last 100 years. I can't shake away the sensation that it could have been a better call.
- gizmo686 12y ago
  In Asimov's I Robot books, Earth has a public transport system based on conveyor belts. A 'highway' would have many lanes running next to each other, gradually getting faster as you moved towards the inner lanes. When I first read that book, I thought it seemed like a lot of wasted space because of the amount of parallel lanes you would need to achieve highway speeds. Then I started driving and noticed how wide our highways already are.
  - mturmon 12y ago
    Hmm, are you sure you aren't thinking of the short story "The Roads Must Roll" by Heinlein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)? The setup you're describing sounds just like the one in that story. I don't recall the same setup in the I, Robot stories (but it's been a long time).
    - gizmo686 12y ago
      I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the fact that within five seconds of reading this comment, Google took me from "Issac Asimov Conveyor belt road" to [1], and a ^F for "Asimov" later I had "The concept of a megalopolis based on high-speed walkways is common in science fiction. The first works set in such a location are "A Story of the Days To Come" (1897) and When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) (also republished as The Sleeper Awakes) written by H. G. Wells, which take place in a future London. Thirty years later, the silent film Metropolis (1927) depicted several scenes showing moving sidewalks and escalators between skyscrapers at high levels. Later, the short story "The Roads Must Roll" (1940), written by Robert A. Heinlein, depicts the risk of a transportation strike in a society based on similar-speed sidewalks. The novel is part of the Future History saga, and takes place in 1976. Isaac Asimov, in the novel The Caves of Steel (1954) and its sequels in the Robot series, uses similar enormous underground cities with a similar sidewalk system. The period described is about the year 3000." [1] We might not have conveyor belts for roads, but we are defiantly living in the future. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway
seany 12y ago
For the bay area locals there's a decent length conveyor system in the Santa Cruz mountains that runs into the cement plant in Davenport. It's hard to gauge the size of it with out trespassing, but you drive over it if you are on Bonny Dune Rd.
- TylerE 12y ago
  2 miles, more or less, at least that's what I get eyeballing it: http://goo.gl/maps/QQKqa http://goo.gl/maps/QQKqa
- el_benhameen 12y ago
  That's been shut down for a while if I'm not mistaken. The supports for the old loading pier are a pretty cool sight, though.
ilamont 12y ago
One can easily detect it by the phosphate spillage south of it. As a teenager I worked at the end of a delivery conveyor belt for a supermarket. This was an unusual setup for a supermarket (but maybe for industrial or factory settings it's nothing special). The supermarket is located over a major highway. It's the Star Market over the Mass Pike/I90 outside of Boston (1). Customers had to take an escalator to the second floor, and after shopping and paying, 2-3 paper grocery bags were loaded into a small numbered cart. The customers were given plastic cards with the corresponding numbers. The carts were swung onto the top level of a double-decker conveyer belt. It went down to the first floor (street level) and into a long, basement like room with a conveyer belt and a road paralleling it. Customers would drive their cars into this long room, pop the trunk, and hand me their cards. I would match up the bags, and place them in the trunk. The empty carts were placed on the bottom level of the conveyer belt, to be brought back to the Muzak-filled main level of the supermarket. The room was filled with fumes and noise from the waiting cars and the interstate tunnel that was next to it. The incessant rattling and squeaking of thousands of metal rollers on the conveyer belts was irritating, although we got used to it (one thing I just realized -- upstairs where the customers were it was an actual belt, which was quiet, but down where we were it was those damn rollers, which were like 1950s-era metal roller skate wheels). We were paid $3.65/hour (minimum wage at the time). But the things that worried us from day to day was the cry of "mix" (human error, wrong bags placed in wrong car) or a spill. Here's what happened with the spills. As the carts came from the 2f to 1f, they went through a series of turns, including at least one 90 degree turn and a full 180 at the bottom of a decline. This spot was where most of the spills took place. It was apparently unavoidable, owing to the layout of the store, the location of the slopes on the belt, the road and loading area, and the needs of the customers to get their cars loaded quickly. The nature of groceries (heavy/light loads, multiple packaging sizes, etc.) and the technology used at the time made it hard to find an easy fix to the problem. Watermelons rolling around the bottom of the carts were the worst. I don't have any profound observations about this, other than spillage is a consideration for people who design and manage conveyer belts, and that the cost can be made manageable for both small and large systems. And these belts can be designed to last years or decades. The belt that we used in that market was in use for more than 20 years by the time I started working there in the 1980s, and it (or a similar system, using the same route) is still in use today, some 50 years after it was installed. 1. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shaw's+Supermarket/@42.350556,-71.208765,19z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e38291eaade731:0xab836219f578ebad https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shaw's+Supermarket/@42.350...
Theodores 12y ago
A lot of fun can be had with conveyor belts. Unexpectedly turning one on whilst someone is standing on one is always funny, whether in an industrial 'dangerous' situation or in some made-for-TV scenario. Incredibly there is good money to be made in conveyor belts designed specifically for film and television: http://www.canningconveyor.co.uk/videos/c/4/tumbleator-videos http://www.canningconveyor.co.uk/videos/c/4/tumbleator-video... In the UK people of a certain age can remember the conveyor belt of 'The Generation Game', which always had a 'cuddly toy' on it, e.g.: http://youtu.be/pa4KoACYzyU?t=4m45s http://youtu.be/pa4KoACYzyU?t=4m45s
yitchelle 12y ago
This belt crosses an international border. It would be interesting to see if there are any border security controls on a conveyor belt of its contents in both directions. Anyone have any info on this?

215 points by NewHatMatt 12y ago

Not much to add because the article doesn't say much, but I do love these feats of engineering. Those are pretty much 10 times as long as I thought they would be. Amazing.

alelefant 12y ago
The colors speak for themselves. ;) It is amazing how long that is. My only experience with a belt was working at Walgreens on warehouse truck days. Even our 60 foot belt continually had product falling off of it. I wonder what kind of oversight is done to make sure the items stay on it.
- guelo 12y ago
  None, that's why you can see the phosphate spillage from space.
  - YokoZar 12y ago
    Still, it seems a little counterintuitive that it's not worth putting up an edge or something.
    - refurb 12y ago
      If it's crushed rock, i'll bet a lot of the spillage is dust and small rocks. After a few years it adds up!
    - kijin 12y ago
      If they poured crushed rock directly onto the belt, not much would be left after only a few kilometers, what with all the curves, slopes, and vibration. The belt will also be damaged beyond repair if you keep rubbing rock against it. So they probably put the rock in boxes and put the boxes on the conveyor belt. The tiny guardrails on either side should be enough to keep the boxes on the belt. Small pieces might spill over if the boxes aren't covered, but most of the cargo will arrive intact.
      - tlb 12y ago
        How would you get the boxes back to the beginning?
        YokoZar 12y ago
        Hang em on the bottom of the conveyer belt!
        saganus 12y ago
        Well, you put another conveyor belt going in the other direction of course. Then you will have the TWO longest conveyor belts in the world. Ka-ching! [Edit: Typo]
        bcoates 12y ago
        Re-use them for shipping out the finished product, so they become someone else's problem.
      - garrettgrimsley 12y ago
        They don't have it in boxes. There are also no guardrails. You might be looking at the conveyor belt in the picture with trees. That's not the Bou Craa belt. Check out this video of a 10.5km limestone conveyor belt in China [0]. Notice the rollers have a tilt to them? I found a better photo of the belt itself on PBS. [1] if you look on the left hand side of the photo you can make out a cylindrical object beneath the belt. That is the roller, it has the a tilt to it, just like the Chinese belt. Any vibration will result in the load gathering toward the bottom the the belt. Most of what we see on the ground is small particles that are swept off of the belt by wind (Used to live near a port and a concrete factory. Lovely air quality, S&W Ready Mix.) [0] http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5TN_H_C4o http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5TN_H_C4o [1] http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/12/21/conveyer_slideshow.jpg http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/12/21/...
- mc32 12y ago
  I'm not sure, but I would guess they could be either have V-shaped x-section or have sag in the middle to avoid having the material fall off the edges.

AceJohnny2 12y ago

The coordinates listed for the single longest conveyer belt are a little bit off. Here's the start: https://goo.gl/maps/X2jg8 https://goo.gl/maps/X2jg8 And here's the end: https://goo.gl/maps/n0wvJ https://goo.gl/maps/n0wvJ (is there a way to get coordinates out of the new Maps?) And while I'm at it, a direct link for the longest combined conveyer belt: https://goo.gl/maps/3kz4s https://goo.gl/maps/3kz4s Pity, no streetview :p

maxmcd 12y ago
Looks like a decimal version of the lat/lng are available in the urls of the links once clicked.
frewsxcv 12y ago
re: coordinates Right click on map -> "What's here" -> look in the box under the search bar

Schwolop 12y ago

This reminds me of one Rio Tinto executive's dismissal of their $70M dollar purchase of a set of autonomous Komatsu haul trucks as "a very expensive reconfigurable conveyor belt".

patdennis 12y ago
For those of you who, like me, didn't know that autonomous mining trucks existed, here's a video of them in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE
- robmcm 12y ago
  For those who have YouTube blocked at work: http://www.komatsu.com.au/AboutKomatsu/Technology/Pages/AHS.aspx http://www.komatsu.com.au/AboutKomatsu/Technology/Pages/AHS....

gk1 12y ago

From the homepage: > "On 15th September 2013, the ConveyorBeltGuide has been online for 10 years." Wow, that is some serious dedication. Assuming there are no ulterior motives--and I don't see evidence of any--it's wonderful to see someone so dedicated to sharing such intricate knowledge with anyone who's interested. And it's not abandoned, either; the disclaimer page notes that all videos on the site have been updated to HTML 5.

1_player 12y ago
That's what I miss the most from pre-Web 2.0 Internet, the Geocities era: there were a lot of small and manually curated sites (as opposed to news aggregators and SEO spam sites) on any kind of topic. Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it.
- greyfade 12y ago
  > Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it. Mostly because the Wikipedians won't even allow it (whether due to a lack of references or because it's not "relevant-" or "notable-enough") in the first place.
  - 1_player 12y ago
    And for a good reason: your grandfather's recollection of WWII, for example, has no place in an encyclopedia, but it's surely more interesting and possibly instructive than reading about it from a history book. I'm saddened we're losing this.
    - girvo 12y ago
      It doesn't have a place in an encyclopedia, for sure, but I posit that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It was supposed to be, and ostensibly started as one, but the amount of content that gets placed into it (and then removed by the mods...) shows that a sizable amount of Wikipedia users use it as a "knowledge repository" instead, which I think is subtly different. I mean, I wish we could collate the entire set of human knowledge into one place, however Wikipedia says that it doesn't want to be that place. The thing is, when you've already got 100,000 word treatises on Sailor Moon due to some Admin/Mod having that as his/her pet topic, it smacks of elitism, favoritism and hypocrisy.

bhhaskin 12y ago

Imagine being lost in the middle of nowhere. Then all of a sudden, conveyor belt.

baddox 12y ago
I'd probably hop on. It has to go somewhere, after all. Unless it's the world's largest circular conveyor belt.
- beachstartup 12y ago
  i would try to follow it, but i would definitely not hop on. especially if it's carrying rocks. nothing good happens to rocks on a conveyor belt.
  - ertdfgcb 12y ago
    Something tells me a 35 km conveyor belt is moving slowly enough to give you plenty of time to hop off before the big crushing thing.
    - saalweachter 12y ago
      I think you're probably right, but devil's advocating it, the height of the conveyor belt could vary, and sometimes be high enough off the ground that you couldn't safely jump off. If the run-up to the limekiln at the end of the conveyor belt is elevated for a long enough stretch, you might not realize the point at which you should jump off until it's too late.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Likely true for those longer ones but the site notes a 54 km/h conveyor belt in Germany. That could be a bit risky...
      - marssaxman 12y ago
        Oh, my. Suddenly I want to go find one of these things and hitch a ride on it.

erjiang 12y ago

I shouldn't be surprised, but the second was already mapped in OpenStreetMap,[0] and I've now added the first.[1] Unfortunately, the default renderer doesn't know how to draw a line of "man_made=conveyor_belt"... [0] http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202757736 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202757736 [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278131952 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278131952

elwell 12y ago

the phosphate trail the wind blew on the ground: http://goo.gl/maps/j9wnh http://goo.gl/maps/j9wnh

bigd 12y ago

I always wonder what would have happened if humanity had invested in conveyor belts instead of cars and roads for the last 100 years. I can't shake away the sensation that it could have been a better call.

gizmo686 12y ago
In Asimov's I Robot books, Earth has a public transport system based on conveyor belts. A 'highway' would have many lanes running next to each other, gradually getting faster as you moved towards the inner lanes. When I first read that book, I thought it seemed like a lot of wasted space because of the amount of parallel lanes you would need to achieve highway speeds. Then I started driving and noticed how wide our highways already are.
- mturmon 12y ago
  Hmm, are you sure you aren't thinking of the short story "The Roads Must Roll" by Heinlein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)? The setup you're describing sounds just like the one in that story. I don't recall the same setup in the I, Robot stories (but it's been a long time).
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the fact that within five seconds of reading this comment, Google took me from "Issac Asimov Conveyor belt road" to [1], and a ^F for "Asimov" later I had "The concept of a megalopolis based on high-speed walkways is common in science fiction. The first works set in such a location are "A Story of the Days To Come" (1897) and When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) (also republished as The Sleeper Awakes) written by H. G. Wells, which take place in a future London. Thirty years later, the silent film Metropolis (1927) depicted several scenes showing moving sidewalks and escalators between skyscrapers at high levels. Later, the short story "The Roads Must Roll" (1940), written by Robert A. Heinlein, depicts the risk of a transportation strike in a society based on similar-speed sidewalks. The novel is part of the Future History saga, and takes place in 1976. Isaac Asimov, in the novel The Caves of Steel (1954) and its sequels in the Robot series, uses similar enormous underground cities with a similar sidewalk system. The period described is about the year 3000." [1] We might not have conveyor belts for roads, but we are defiantly living in the future. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway

seany 12y ago

For the bay area locals there's a decent length conveyor system in the Santa Cruz mountains that runs into the cement plant in Davenport. It's hard to gauge the size of it with out trespassing, but you drive over it if you are on Bonny Dune Rd.

TylerE 12y ago
2 miles, more or less, at least that's what I get eyeballing it: http://goo.gl/maps/QQKqa http://goo.gl/maps/QQKqa
el_benhameen 12y ago
That's been shut down for a while if I'm not mistaken. The supports for the old loading pier are a pretty cool sight, though.

ilamont 12y ago

One can easily detect it by the phosphate spillage south of it. As a teenager I worked at the end of a delivery conveyor belt for a supermarket. This was an unusual setup for a supermarket (but maybe for industrial or factory settings it's nothing special). The supermarket is located over a major highway. It's the Star Market over the Mass Pike/I90 outside of Boston (1). Customers had to take an escalator to the second floor, and after shopping and paying, 2-3 paper grocery bags were loaded into a small numbered cart. The customers were given plastic cards with the corresponding numbers. The carts were swung onto the top level of a double-decker conveyer belt. It went down to the first floor (street level) and into a long, basement like room with a conveyer belt and a road paralleling it. Customers would drive their cars into this long room, pop the trunk, and hand me their cards. I would match up the bags, and place them in the trunk. The empty carts were placed on the bottom level of the conveyer belt, to be brought back to the Muzak-filled main level of the supermarket. The room was filled with fumes and noise from the waiting cars and the interstate tunnel that was next to it. The incessant rattling and squeaking of thousands of metal rollers on the conveyer belts was irritating, although we got used to it (one thing I just realized -- upstairs where the customers were it was an actual belt, which was quiet, but down where we were it was those damn rollers, which were like 1950s-era metal roller skate wheels). We were paid $3.65/hour (minimum wage at the time). But the things that worried us from day to day was the cry of "mix" (human error, wrong bags placed in wrong car) or a spill. Here's what happened with the spills. As the carts came from the 2f to 1f, they went through a series of turns, including at least one 90 degree turn and a full 180 at the bottom of a decline. This spot was where most of the spills took place. It was apparently unavoidable, owing to the layout of the store, the location of the slopes on the belt, the road and loading area, and the needs of the customers to get their cars loaded quickly. The nature of groceries (heavy/light loads, multiple packaging sizes, etc.) and the technology used at the time made it hard to find an easy fix to the problem. Watermelons rolling around the bottom of the carts were the worst. I don't have any profound observations about this, other than spillage is a consideration for people who design and manage conveyer belts, and that the cost can be made manageable for both small and large systems. And these belts can be designed to last years or decades. The belt that we used in that market was in use for more than 20 years by the time I started working there in the 1980s, and it (or a similar system, using the same route) is still in use today, some 50 years after it was installed. 1. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shaw's+Supermarket/@42.350556,-71.208765,19z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e38291eaade731:0xab836219f578ebad https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shaw's+Supermarket/@42.350...

Theodores 12y ago

A lot of fun can be had with conveyor belts. Unexpectedly turning one on whilst someone is standing on one is always funny, whether in an industrial 'dangerous' situation or in some made-for-TV scenario. Incredibly there is good money to be made in conveyor belts designed specifically for film and television: http://www.canningconveyor.co.uk/videos/c/4/tumbleator-videos http://www.canningconveyor.co.uk/videos/c/4/tumbleator-video... In the UK people of a certain age can remember the conveyor belt of 'The Generation Game', which always had a 'cuddly toy' on it, e.g.: http://youtu.be/pa4KoACYzyU?t=4m45s http://youtu.be/pa4KoACYzyU?t=4m45s

yitchelle 12y ago

This belt crosses an international border. It would be interesting to see if there are any border security controls on a conveyor belt of its contents in both directions. Anyone have any info on this?