Big Trucks

Ever wonder how they make concrete for the highways? Let me tell you.

Today I was lucky to co-op at Oldest's school. It was a field trip day. We went to see one of his classmates Dad at work. This dad works for one of his family's companies. They make the concrete that makes our roads.

First, they bring in large chunks of old road by a large dump truck. A jack hammer vehicle breaks it into smaller pieces. Next a truck with a jaw like grip thing on the front rips out the metal in the smaller road pieces. Yes the roads we drive on have metal in them and the metal they pull out of old roads gets recycled into new cars!

After the metal is removed, the smaller road pieces go through an elaborate conveyor belt system that breaks it down into even smaller pieces that are sifted a few times so that they don't end up too big. Once they are broken down into very small rock they are placed on a huge pile until they are loaded on a dump truck again for transport to the construction site to become our roads again.

Before they leave the trucks are weighed on a huge scale. Everyone on the field trip, the class, teacher and co-oping parents stepped on the huge scale. Altogether we weighed 1700 lbs.

The experience was priceless. One of Oldest's classmates rode with us in our car and they talked the whole way there. They pointed out every truck we saw on our trip. I loved listening to their discussion. On the way back they were exhausted. Not much was said. Probably very low energy because after we got back and had snack time they all perked right up and played on the playground.

I loved my time with my son today. We both learned something new.

~Recycle