Life cycle of a Ford Car

[Jack Bennett]

Copied this from Facebook.

I hope it isn’t copyright infringement of some sort because I enjoyed it, and it deserves to be shared.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1029767828037864

[JFranklin]

OUCH! 

[zepher]

That one car didn't look like it was wearing a Ford radiator badge.

But recycling cars is nothing new, I wonder how many vehicles were recycled this way?

[Rusty_OToole]

The used car problem was something new in the twenties. For the first time there was a glut of used cars on the market. Ford's plan was to buy up old cars and melt them down for scrap, using the steel to make new Fords. A hundred years ago there was a lot of discussion in the industry about the used car problem and what could be done about it. That was Ford's solution.

[Reynard]

That Facebook page wont come up for me ("temporary", they say) so I may be off base here., but...

I met an old guy in the 1960's who he said, as a kid, he was employed by the local Model T dealer to destroy used cars taken in trade. His only tool was a heavy sledge hammer which he applied liberally to all parts of the car, especially engines and radiators. Most of the scrap became land fill over which subdivisions have now been built.

[TAKerry]

I was at the scrap yard the other day and they had just dropped a late model suv into the crusher. First time I have ever seen a car crushed in person within about 10 feet. It was pretty cool watching the machine turn the once proud auto into a cube of metal and plastic.

[Terry Bond]

There are a couple of other videos out there about the War-time scrap drives that show classic cars being turned in, stripped and junked.   I can't seem to find them at the moment, but links to other similar tales of woe would be interesting to watch.

Terry

[zepher]

At a local railroad museum, there are plenty of pictures of the LA street cars piled really high, well over 50 feet high and then other pictures of them as they were burning them.

 

It's a real shame only a few survive, today.

[Jack Bennett]

4 hours ago, TAKerry said:

I was at the scrap yard the other day and they had just dropped a late model suv into the crusher. First time I have ever seen a car crushed in person within about 10 feet. It was pretty cool watching the machine turn the once proud auto into a cube of metal and plastic.

I often drive by the local wrecking yard as they load the crushed cars on a semi trailer. The cars were destined to meet this end eventually, so my tears aren’t shed for the cars. Rather, I think about how many lives this load of cars has indelibly altered from the time they were bought new until that final push into the smelter. At 20 years confinement per theft, can’t help but wonder how many people are taking a state paid vacation in prison for stealing one of these pancakes.

[Twisted Shifter]

1 hour ago, Jack Bennett said:

At 20 years confinement per theft, can’t help but wonder how many people are taking a state paid vacation in prison for stealing one of these pancakes.

 

Does your county really investigate, identify, arrest, indict, try, convict, sentence and incarcerate car thieves?

 

 

  

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Twisted Shifter (see edit history)

[Restorer32]

Client of ours years ago told me his Dad had a smelting operation in Northern PA.  In the late 1930's he bought 1000 cars for scrap to be melted down.  He paid .78 cents each for the 1000 cars.

[critterpainter]

Several years ago I walked by a load of freshly crushed cars on a truck.  On one car the left front headlight was on.  Obviously the battery was still in place.

[Andy J]

When I was a teenager in the late '60s,I hung around/worked at a shop down the street from me.The owner had a yard with about 200-230 cars in it. He had the crusher come out and crush probably about half of them,old stuff and badly wrecked cars. Most that went were late '30s through late '50s. There were a few Hudsons,Packards,Cadillacs,Nashes, Desotos, and some others that he wasn't selling any parts off of.

 

I didn't think much about it then.Today I think about that and get sick to my stomach.That man let me have anything I wanted out of that yard.I just got parts,but never an entire care.I just wish I could have thought ahead.

 

 

[Jack Bennett]

6 hours ago, critterpainter said:

Several years ago I walked by a load of freshly crushed cars on a truck.  On one car the left front headlight was on.  Obviously the battery was still in place.

Or, and you have to read my thread “Do you talk to your car” to understand how this can happen.