What happens to your old truck – your treasured vehicle when it dies and hits the pavement? Or better put when it leaves the road? You may well have seen crushed cars and vehicles – actually many all in little cubes carefully stacked, piled and tied down on a flatbed trailer being towed down the highway. Is this what happens to my treasured vehicle after many years of relatively trouble free service you may well of wondered? Or will my treasured friend simply end up in a landfill or worse rusting away to no avail or benefit to anyone or any future motorist.

It is interesting to note that as you stare at those single compact bales of steel on that flatbed truck trailer that each and every one of those metal bundles started off one day as the proud possession of a new automobile owner who after haggling and dealing with a new car or truck dealer proudly took possession of their brand new vehicle at one point and would been all very proud of the newly factory built and dealer delivered unit.

Once your vehicle has reached the point of either being too old or too expensive to repair or even wrecked by collision your vehicle still has intrinsic value. In the case of trucks especially even if the vehicle is not tradable or has little value to a dealership most of a typical heavy duty truck can be ultimately recycled, salvaged or even refurbished.

An average tractor trailer , which will weigh in total at a accurate truck weigh scale in the range of five to five and a half tons it can be said that 85 to 90 % of all the weight components are essentially solid basic steel metal in essence all in all.

Good steel metal always has value in the scrap metal industry as scrap recycling industry steel metal. In the scrap metal yard the rear end of the vehicle, motor and transmission of the truck vehicle unit will be cut out and sold for the steel scrap metal value itself.

Next in line wheels themselves will be unbolted, removed, cleaned, repainted and ultimately sold to roll down the highways one day yet again on other similar truck model tractor trailers. Along with that rubber tires can be sold yet again if it highway safe condition, if not then retreaded. Generally tires can be safely retreaded according to highway traffic safety rules and procedures 3 times overall. If the tires have had too many miles on the road and are beyond safely retreading then they can be shred into “tire mulch” and utilized for a myriad of uses including for recycled tire mulch for kids playgrounds and highway construction use for roadway reinforcements.

Lastly a truck headed for salvage is handled in a fashion similar to an old car. It goes through a shredder, which separates steel from aluminum and non-metallic material and materials. Steel aluminum and ferrous as well as non-ferrous items are separated and recycled. Plastics – which make up a greater and greater percentage of most vehicles volume, are also separated and more and more are being recycled, even if only as base plastic materials? Vehicle recycling experts note that overall there is not a lot of residual non-metallic materials lastly left – other than the rubber around door frames, plastic in the tractor trailer cabs itself and some fiberglass materials left over. Fiberglass from the tractor trailer cabs at this point in time has little value and merit and is ultimately destroyed by shredding being left for the landfill itself.

What a shame. All from those miles and miles of those truck tractor trailers on the road. Shredded fiberglass for the landfill site.

Kirk W. Nobbe
Ford 150 Truck
Service Winnipeg Manitoba

service all types and models of trucks and SUVs in Manitoba