When you’re sitting on the ground
in a massive pile of filth, and you see forklifts driving by toting transfer ladles of molten aluminum, a ton of it at a time, at eye level, and you see it slopping around, you start to wonder if you need to find another line of work. Thankfully, this is something that doesn’t happen that often.
Good to go back to a job in a diecast or foundry once in a while, remember my roots, keep in touch with the shit that happens close to the bone.
Damn, though. These drivers all think they’re Helio Castroneves. Instead, they are more the equivalent of the ever inappropriately named Scott Speed.
Reminds me of an incident that happened in my home town a while back. There was a buisness north of town which melted down scrap aluminum and shipped it, still molten, in big-ass crucibles to another business south of town. Said crucibles were shipped on low-boy trailers with just enough of a lid to keep the molten aluminum from slopping out in transit. There would be a couple shipments a (day? week? I forget) along a road with a sharp curve at the bottom of a hill. Well, one day a combination of a driver going too fast around the curve and a poorly-tied down crucible resulted in one of them coming off of the trailer. It skidded, still upright, across the road into the oncoming lane where it met a car coming the other way. It pushed the car off of the road into a 10 foot ditch, whereupon it tipped over and dumped a ton or so of molten aluminum to pool around the car. Unfortunately for the poor bastards inside it was a low speed collision and they were very much concious, albiet briefly, as the aluminum torched the car and then seeped into the passenger compartment to a depth of about waist high. It took a couple of days for the whole mess to cool down enough for recovery of the remains.
Pleasant dreams.