Dirty Jobs (2005) s01e04 Episode Script

1 My name is Mike rowe, and this is my job.
I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty You're gonna get a little taste of what it's like to be a septic tank technician.
hardworking men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.
Now, get ready to get dirty.
Captions by vitac captions paid for by discovery communications coming up on "dirty jobs," I hitch a ride on a midnight trash truck.
Whoa, be careful, buddy! Then I sail the high seas with a man obsessed with sharks.
Oh, my god! Easy does it, cap, easy does it! And later, I stop by a chop shop and make rusty old junk go snap, crackle [ Explosion .]
Oh, god! It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it ahh! Ahh! Whoa-oh, oh-oh, oh it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it San Francisco The city by the bay, famous for the golden gate bridge, streetcars, fisherman's wharf, and sourdough bread.
San Francisco may be unique, but she does have something in common with every other city in the world.
That's right, it's garbage.
This is the midnight run here in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Tonight I'm along for the ride.
So, this is Lawrence Jackson III.
He picks up the garbage on the Chinatown route.
I'm gonna be riding shotgun on the garbage truck tonight.
All right, what have you got in your hand? Burlap sack.
This is your garbage can tonight.
What do you mean it's the garbage can? This is what you put the garbage in.
You spread it down like a blanket, put the garbage in it, grab four corners, and put it on your back.
We don't have garbage cans in Chinatown? No.
Huh.
Some do, some don't.
So this is stop number one.
This is the first stop.
Is this commercial, or is this residential? This is residential.
All right.
Holy crap! Every week, San Francisco generates over 17,000 tons of garbage.
Are you kidding me? No.
This is how the garbage is picked up.
And in Chinatown, the steep streets and narrow hallways make collecting trash the normal way next to impossible.
The hallway is just as wide as your shoulders, so when you make the sack, you have to make sure the sack is tight enough to go across your back because you're going in the room You want to have a tight sack, right? That's right.
Gotcha.
Evening.
So this is where we pick up the garbage at, in here.
Holy crap! And Eureka! [ Rattling .]
Hold the sack for me.
I got the sack.
All right.
Okay.
And what you do is clean the rest of the Rake that out, put it in the sack, and you can bring that out.
There you go.
Keep the customers happy.
Grab the four corners.
And what you do, put them both together tight as you can and throw it over your shoulder.
Get out of here.
Yeah, let me show you.
Huh? Whoa, be careful, buddy! [ Laughs .]
You got it? Yeah, I got it.
Okay.
Now what? We go dump the sack out in the truck.
Uh-oh.
You all right, Mike? I'm all right.
A little, uh, redecorating.
Jackson: Okay.
Between the hours of midnight and 5:00 A.
M.
, l.
j.
III makes 200 stops, and all garbage has to be picked up before the morning rush hour.
Oh, Mike, come on! You got it here? I got it.
You need help throwing it in the truck? What do you do now? Let me show you.
I'll show you how to do this one, and you're gonna learn the other ones, okay? Right here.
Right.
Pick it up, one swing.
Huh? Not too bad, huh? Very nice! You got a little wrist action going there.
You gotta have a snap back, huh? When you open the black gate, just walk to the end of the hallway.
At the top of the stairs, there's a small can.
I'm gonna pull the truck up, keep this truck moving.
Where is he at? Give it to me! Oh! You threw away the sack.
Okay, all right.
I'll see you downstairs.
Yeah, don't be a stranger.
[ Grunts .]
Step aside, Mike, let me.
Here.
Here, Mike.
There's your bag.
You know what? I think you're almost patronizing me a little bit.
I mean, are you kidding me? You didn't think I was weak, huh, Mike? Jackson: Come on, Mike.
I'm coming.
What's a garbage truck like this cost? Uh, probably $185,000, fully loaded, but no cruise control.
No cruise control.
Real funny guy.
How do your legs feel, Mike? Legs I haven't felt my legs in a half-hour.
Okay, Mike, let's go get our other can.
You got your other can, Mike? How are you doing, Mike? I'm coming! He's wearing me down.
There you go.
On an average shift, l.
j.
III hauls 2 1/2 tons of trash.
One of the job benefits is full medical.
The most common claim for trash collectors Back strain.
Oh, you go ahead there, l.
J.
, I'll catch up.
L.
j.
III is a machine.
Whoa, Mike, I don't know! Oh, that's a nice tip.
I'm not gonna teach you no more tricks.
You learn too fast! Let's go, buddy! Hang on, buddy! I'm hanging.
After eight hours with l.
J.
III, I was trashed.
But the garbage was still on the move, and so was I.
The people of San Francisco recycle 63% of all their trash.
That's incredible.
No other city even comes close.
Most of that trash winds up here at recycle central on pier 96.
Every day, 800 tons of bottles, cans, and plastic need to be sorted, baled, and shipped.
They're open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
They never close, except on Christmas.
But today is no holiday.
Recycle central separates and ships 160,000 tons of materials every year and takes in $22 million, which helps defray the enormous costs of processing.
So this is John, and John is a what exactly are you? I'm a g.
U.
, g.
U.
Classifier.
What's that mean? General utility classifier.
A general utility classifier, and you basically work the line here, right? Right, what we do here, we try and get as much cardboard that comes through.
What I'm gonna have you do, I'm gonna have you grab the trash, okay? Because I got to tell you, you're missing a whole lot of this.
Yeah, that's why I got my crew behind me.
Everything I miss, they pick up.
If you grab the plastic here, all the plastic, and I'll grab the cardboard.
And if any money go by, you let that go, and I'll grab that, also.
Because that's paper.
That's like a tip.
Yes, but we won't let anyone else get that.
I'll just go for that there.
We don't split it.
How long you been doing this? I've been doing this for six years.
In a row? In a row, believe it or not.
I'm getting vaguely nauseous.
I'll tell you what, it is moving a little fast.
We're gonna switch places, okay? How about if you grab the cardboard, and I'll grab the trash.
John: A number of items come through.
We have a wallet here.
Let's see.
Come on, talk to me.
You check that part, and, of course, I'm gonna check the wallet here.
Bus pass.
So you find people's utility bills, phone bills.
Yeah, they got to be careful what they throw, too.
No kidding, look at that.
$100.
That's a funny-looking $100 bill.
And here on the back, the I.
D.
, all that personal information.
What are people thinking? I don't know.
I wouldn't throw my personal information away.
I wouldn't, either, John.
You never know who's gonna pick it up.
Never know who's looking.
Coming up, I meet a guy who turns rotten food into black gold.
Later, I'm on board with a shark biologist who teaches me how to make some tasty seafood appetizers.
Then, I go grave robbing in an automotive cemetery.
"Alas, poor yorick.
" Here at San Francisco's recycle central, the garbage makes its way through the sorting process in a maze of hundreds of conveyer belts.
And I mean hundreds.
Oh, look, another conveyor belt.
What's this one do? This part of the system here, we have to separate the white and the colored plastic from the clear plastic.
Clear plastic is not white plastic.
That's considered p.
E.
T.
, which is clear.
What's p.
E.
T.
Stand for? Oh, you got me there, Mike.
See? I knew sooner or later I was gonna stump you.
So if the system's working, John, everything here should be newspaper.
Yeah.
This point here is the most important part.
Sergio touches everything before it goes to the baler.
So his job is to make sure that this is the cleanest material that we can get before it's baled up so we can sell a good product.
So, John, you might say this is where it all comes out in the end.
Yeah, this is the end product here.
This is where it all comes down to.
We get about 400 bales a day coming out of here.
What do you do with them? We sell it.
We send out about 30 containers a day.
Like ship containers? Yes.
Good god, that's a lot of recycled stuff.
How much does a bale of recycled paper sell for? A bale like this goes anywhere from $120 to $200.
How much does it weigh? About a ton.
We shouldn't be standing right here, should we? Actually, we might want to stand back a little bit so it won't get on our feet.
A senseless way to die, really a recycled host.
The facility accepts all kinds of dirty stuff to be recycled.
But one thing they don't take is uneaten food.
L.
j.
III does, though, on the second part of his midnight run.
Look at this.
So we're obviously at a restaurant.
Jackson: Right.
Huh.
Leftovers.
What do we do with this stuff? Take it to the landfill.
Whoa, look at this! Are you kidding? That's an awful lot of food to throw out.
So we dump it the same way? Yeah, same way.
This is a food waste load.
We hook them up, and we dump them.
So this is tonight's blue plate special, huh? Yep, that's the blue plate special, buddy.
Where are we gonna take this? It's going to napa.
This goes up to napa valley.
Yes, sir.
That's why your wine tastes so good.
That's going to go in my wine? Please, tell me there's another process between here and the vineyard.
Rowe: If it's not bottles, cans, or paper, it's refuse.
And the refuse we collected last night in Chinatown was hauled here to jepson prairie organics where it gets recycled in a slightly different way.
Step one unload the truck.
I am basically standing in the four major food groups, and then some, complete with a salad.
We've got the bread course.
We have bananas, vegetables, something that I'm reasonably sure used to be a chicken.
And for the gourmand Sushi.
The chef now responsible for this smorgasbord from hell goes by the name of Toby.
Most men would be horrified and sickened by the smell in the air right now, but Toby is not like most men.
You don't smell anything at all, do you? No, sir.
It smells like money.
What are you doing here? What is going on? I'm making black gold.
How does one make black gold? Well, Mike, we pick this material up right here.
We drop it in my 800-horse grinder.
800-horsepower, you mean.
800 horsepower.
You get a good, homogenized blend.
Wait a minute, "homogenized blend"? Don't ask me to spell it.
No, but you just made that sound kind of beautiful, and that kind of frightens me.
[ Engine turns over .]
So how much of this gets processed every day? Approximately 250 tons we get a day.
800 horsepower, baby! Homogenized blend.
Nice.
After the food particles have been ground up, it's back into trash bags Big ones And the garbage is one step closer to becoming black gold.
What's it look like when it comes out of the bag? It would look just like this one row right here.
This is what it looks like.
And then for another additional 30 days, we will turn it every three days, and it will be black gold.
Yeah, because I was gonna say it doesn't look like black gold now.
It will.
When the compost is turned, it's exposed to the air That steam you can see coming off there.
As the compost generates its own heat, it reaches temperatures of up to 140 degrees, drying it out and aging it to perfection.
It's like a waterfall of waste.
Is that fair? That's very fair to say.
It's our black gold.
Black gold throws off a lot of heat, Toby.
You know that, don't you? Yes, it's still very much active.
It kind of radiates right up through one when one sits on the black gold.
It's not altogether unpleasant sitting in black gold.
No, it'll grow on you.
It'll grow on you.
What's the next step? What happens now? It's ready to be shipped.
What? "Shipped.
" we're gonna ship it.
Ship? S-h-i-p, ship.
"Ship," just so we're clear.
When you're hauling 20 tons of black gold, you want to ride in style.
Today, this is our limousine.
Hit it, Kevin.
The Rolls-Royce of refuse.
There are 50 vineyards in northern California waiting to get a taste of black gold, and they're willing to pay for it 9 bucks a cubic yard.
So, we are at the bouchaine winery in napa valley.
They've just purchased 20 tons of black gold.
We dropped 10 tons of it down there out front, and we're about to spread the remaining 10 tons over some perfectly unsuspecting grapes.
Well, the load has been dumped, but the work never really ends, at least according to remi Cohen, who is the vineyard manager here? That's right.
I've also heard you referred to as the compost queen.
That's what they call me.
A term of endearment, no doubt.
I'm gonna take a wild guess, but since we're walking with buckets and shovels, we're gonna be doing some shoveling? That's right, Mike.
We're gonna put some compost under the vines right as they're about to start growing here.
Don't they have machines to do this kind of thing? They do, but it's a little wet to get into the vineyard this time of year, so we're gonna do it by hand.
Remi, you really do have a positive attitude for somebody who is basically shoveling steaming piles of leftover recycled food.
That's true, but it's a beautiful day in a beautiful vineyard.
See, that's the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
You really are very cheerful about this whole thing, aren't you? Well, they'll be happy vines.
Happy vines makes good wine.
So, aside from making the vines happy Which I understand is crucial Is there any scientific evidence to suggest that this black gold is really doing the job? Well, this compost adds soil organic matter and nutrients, and it helps build the microbial population, so it sustains the vines over time.
What's great about that is that you can use less synthetic fertilizers in your vineyard over the season, so that's a real great benefit for the environment.
Those certainly are a lot of big words.
[ Laughs .]
"Microbial" I think you used there.
It's a good one.
[ Laughs .]
Now, this is Pinot, right? This is chardonnay here, but we do have Pinot, as well.
How can you tell the difference looking at a naked vine? This time of the year it's pretty hard, but when the vines start growing, there's lot of different ways.
It's called "ampelography," actually.
That's another large word.
Are you an ampelographist? I've studied with them before.
I'm a viticulturist.
Third big word you've used.
[ Laughs .]
Okay, well, we're nowhere near done, but I've got to think that at some point you guys do put liquid into a bottle and actually put a cork in it, subsequently remove it, and enjoy the contents? That's right.
Black gold to liquid gold.
Yeah? Is it gonna be a Pinot or a chardonnay? We can have either.
We can have both.
"Way leads on to way" Robert frost, right? [ Laughs .]
"Two roads diverged in a yellow vineyard.
" So literary.
I'm making most of this up.
Anyway, forget the grapes.
Here's the dirt Rotten refuse and smelly garbage and big words.
[ Laughing .]
Okay.
Coming up, I revisit the waters made famous by the movie "jaws" and learn some surprising facts about the sharks that live there.
Martha's vineyard island in Massachusetts A lovely vacation spot.
But this show isn't called "dirty vacations.
" We're here to work.
Our work is fishing, and the fish are sharks.
Rowe: That's Greg skomal back there.
Greg is a marine biologist.
In fact, according to his hat, he's a shark specialist for the Massachusetts division of marine fisheries.
Marine biologist is a great job.
Today, I'll be the assistant to the marine biologist.
That job not so great.
Tell me about the research.
What exactly are you learning? What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Well, because I work for a state agency, my goal is to maintain healthy populations of sharks.
You know, I go out, and I catch sharks.
We do various kinds of ecological research Physiology, take blood samples.
We're gonna set gear to see how many are out there.
And the best part of my job is it changes every day.
Yeah, like the weather.
Like the weather.
And that can be a problem.
Well, what are we looking at out there today? It looks like there's a little wind kicking up here.
It's bumpy out there.
We got southwest 15 to 20.
Marginal for this boat, to be honest with you, but I don't see any reason why we need to abort the mission right now.
Any time you hear "marginal" and "abort" in the same sentence Not good.
[ Laughs .]
That's a lot of hooks, Greg.
That's a lot of hooks.
This is long-line gear, all right? It's a commercial fishing technique.
We use it to see what kind of sharks occur in this area.
This is American eel.
American eel.
American eel.
We do statistical analyses on the number of sharks we catch per hundred hooks.
And we compare it from year to year and from area to area so we can look at what we call "relative abundance" of sharks to see if the population's growing.
So you run him straight in under the head.
And look at that hook.
That's a hook that says, you know I mean, it lands home.
It lands home.
As we catch these sharks, we're gonna put tags on them, and we're gonna let them go.
When these sharks get caught again, we're gonna learn a little bit about their migratory patterns, their general distribution, and to kind of fill in the blanks on some of the biological aspects of their life we don't know anything about.
You lift the hook up.
And you can see these are big shark hooks.
Wow.
And they're sharp shark hooks.
And you're just gonna press it down through the head of the thing.
In case you haven't figured out from the size of the boat, the length of the line, or the fact that I'm first mate on this vessel, we're not hunting for 18-foot great whites.
But it was still a dirty job.
Go ahead.
We're fishing.
All right, the grinder is in the gunwale, and Greg and I are a couple miles off the coast of Martha's vineyard, correct? Yeah, yeah, a few miles out.
We're in nantucket sound.
This is right where Spielberg shot the last scene of the movie.
Absolutely, absolutely Right in this area here.
And it was an ideal spot for him because he was far enough from land where he couldn't see a lot of land.
He didn't want his audience to see land.
Well, unlike Steven, we don't really care what our audience sees.
Case in point, we're about to turn these perfectly innocent mackerel into a bouillabaisse.
A nice bouillabaisse, a nice stew, if you will.
And we're gonna make up a nice mixture so we can set out a chum slick and see what kind of sharks we can bring in.
Oh, bad day to be a mackerel, huh? This is the best kind of chum to make.
Grinding it right up The more blood, the more muscle.
How are you doing? [ Strained voice .]
Doing good.
You sound good.
Doing good.
The chum smells bad.
You're starting to back up a little bit.
[ Normal voice .]
Nice warm day, rough seas, the smell of freshly ground mackerel hitting you square in the face like a moist sponge.
Yeah.
If you don't vomit in a situation like this, I suppose you never will.
It's a good day.
There we go.
There we go.
Oh, there's some good goo coming your way, doctor.
That's good.
That's real good.
Yeah, look at this.
Coming right out.
Now, that's excellent.
[ Hoarse voice .]
Sharking In the Atlantic.
Yes a dirty job.
Coming up, it's a shark attack.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Later, I go to a place cars go to when they die.
There you are, gentlemen, your motor's on the ground.
Yeah.
As we troll the waters of nantucket sound, I learn how shark specialist Greg skomal captures his specimens.
It's pretty easy, really.
You put out some hooks baited with American eel, grind up some unsuspecting bait fish, and, after puking your guts out, you make a chum slick in the water that will, hopefully, attract the unsuspecting sharks.
We don't want to put it too far in the water, so you want it so the water line is basically just washing up against the bottom of it.
Then you wait and wait And wait.
Here comes our first hook.
I don't see a shark.
Oh, my god, a shark right on the first one! Holy crap! Easy does it, cap, easy does it! Geez, Louise! That thing scared the hell out of me.
Holy crap! I think we got one.
[ Laughs .]
There you go, there you go.
This is a female smooth dogfish.
A female smooth dogfish.
I'm gonna tag a shark, that's what I'm gonna do.
Mustelus canis, if you will.
I will, I will "mustelus canis.
" Mustelus canis.
Stretch that out.
106 centimeters.
Over a yard long, okay.
Now, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take this tag and put it right into her dorsal fin here, and it's not gonna hurt her at all because the dorsal fin doesn't have a lot of nervous tissue.
Right about there? Yeah, right there and just squeeze that.
And now open it all the way before you pull it.
Go ahead and open it all the way.
And now pull it back.
There you go.
So we got our tag in her fin.
She's b10933.
That's her, that's her.
B10933.
Nothing personal, honey, but I hope we never meet again.
What I've found from dissecting a number of these females is that they're pregnant, so she's probably pregnant.
Why do you say that? Does she look pregnant? Yeah, it's her size.
She's an adult female.
Probably moving in here to give birth to her young.
I'm guessing that you want to go back and have your babies.
Good luck, sweetie.
What the heck's this? Did she just give birth? She just gave birth to one of her babies.
Are you kidding me? Just like that? I just scared a baby out of a shark? Yes, you did.
This is a full-term embryo.
We can release that.
I think we ought to do it now.
Go find your mother.
Got another one! Holy cow! Oh, yeah.
Oh, we're catching shark all over the place All over town.
What kind of teeth do these guys have in them? They got molars that are more like crushing teeth.
It's not to say that they're not sharp.
They're a little bit sharp.
Go ahead, come over here and feel them.
Perfectly adapted for crushing.
Right.
These are actually teeth right there.
Yeah.
You can see each individual tooth.
Just like other sharks Multiple rows of teeth.
Right.
What I'd like to do is get a blood sample from her And I'm gonna have you do that.
I'm gonna show you where to do it.
I'm gonna stabilize her.
You're gonna go through the caudal vein.
The caudal vein is going to be right where I'm pointing.
So imagine a line drawn right here, and go down.
Put it in until you touch the backbone.
Once you punch through the skin, just go very shallow.
Hey, that's not bad.
That's not bad at all.
Is that enough to tell us something? Yeah, that's gonna tell us something.
Is she pregnant, you think? Yes.
The girth on her is indicative of such.
You got another shark.
Good grief! Wow, that's a 4 1/2-footer.
Big dogfish.
Man.
You're just a little fella.
[ Sighs .]
These are largely nocturnal creatures, this particular species of shark.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Wow, this is not a small fish.
No, these are large adult females.
Wow, 117.
[ Grunts .]
Oh, my goodness.
Off you go.
Skomal: Whoa, another big one! I haven't caught seven fish on one of these lines in years.
It's a great sign.
We're in a breeding ground of one of these sharks, and it was just fantastic for my research.
We tagged them all and got blood samples.
You're gonna analyze all that.
I think what it is you're trying to say is you couldn't have done it without me.
Well, I couldn't have done it without another person.
Just get it off your chest and say it.
All right, I couldn't have done it without you.
See? Coming up, I take a wild ride through an automobile junkyard and stop at nothing to get just the right part.
When it comes to cars There's new, there's used, and there's really, really used.
Well, if you're looking for the right part, there's nobody bigger than medford auto wreckers.
There's nobody dirtier, either.
In a typical year, medford receives 1,200 cars, strips and resells 20,000 parts, and does over $1 million in business.
It's a dirty, time-consuming form of recycling that most mechanics and parts dealers wouldn't do themselves.
But, by taking all those cars off the road, medford is helping to keep thousands more on it.
The first stop for every car that comes to the yard is the prep rack.
That's where the wheels are removed, as well as the gas tank.
This is Mark.
He's gonna take off the gas tank.
Why are you gonna do that? Well, for safety reasons.
When this car is stored in the yard, there will be no chance of fire.
Someone's working on it, cutting out a rear end, won't have to worry about the gas tank.
We're gonna cut these straps up here first.
Be careful.
Am I gonna try and catch this, or is this just gonna fall? I would stay out of the way.
Oh, okay.
All right, you want to cut that? Yeah.
Huh.
There you go.
Cut them rubber hoses.
That would be gas.
Yep.
Got her? Got it.
So that's basically it.
You take the tanks off cars.
I usually get work orders and go into the yard and pull parts for the customers.
You do that by foot, you run around this whole place? No, no.
18 acres You have a car we drive around with torches in it and tools in it, and we go to the car and pull the parts.
What kind of car is it? It's custom.
Yeah, that's custom.
Mark: We put our tanks in here for cutting out rear ends, suspension, heating up bolts Whatever we need to do.
What's in the tanks? This is m.
A.
P.
Gas and oxygen.
We have a fire extinguisher for safety.
All right, let's go find a part.
What have you got on top there? Okay, what we're gonna do here is we're gonna go to 45-4, and they're asking for a Lincoln alternator.
So if everything is as planned, 45 rows down, 4 in, we're gonna find a Lincoln, and we're gonna take out the alternator.
Yes, sir.
That sounds like a plan.
Oh, I do believe you have a hole in the floor, as well.
Yeah, I got a hole, and water's coming up.
Well, 45-4 is over here for the alternators.
Let's get us an alternator.
Run out some line here in case we need to cut a bolt or two.
Okay.
Now, you've got enough line to reach any car in any row? Well, about 75 foot worth.
There she is Lincoln town car.
Yeah, this alternator right here they specified in the office.
Okay.
Any of this stuff in the way? Yes.
Glasses on, hat backwards.
All right, so we heat it up just a bit.
Get the tip closer to the metal.
When it gets cherry red, then you hit oxygen.
Cherry red.
How about like a tomato red? All right, here we go then.
I've got to be honest with you, through these glasses, I feel like Waldo pepper.
I can't see anything.
Utilize the light from the torch to see.
Oh, yeah, that's a good tip.
I think we're cool.
Yeah, you got it.
Yeah.
How do you turn this bad boy off? Turn this one here.
Yeah.
Now turn this one.
I've never said "bad boy" in a sentence before.
I like it.
A little bonus for the customer.
Get rid of that ground lead in the back.
Oh, this guy? That guy right there.
No fingers.
Now you're gonna have to pull this out of the bracket here.
Need a little muscle on it.
You'll get it to come out.
Go ahead.
All right.
Working.
Watch the fingers.
There we go.
Look at that.
Oh, she's a beaut.
Look at that.
"Alas, poor yorick.
" Well, we're gonna have to bring this up right away.
The customer's waiting for this.
Oh, they can wait a little longer.
Let me revel in my moment of glory.
Okay.
Okay, that's long enough.
[ Engine turns over .]
Hit it.
There are over 3,000 cars here, and every part in every one of these cars has to be inventoried.
Next on our to-do list is the retrieval of a rearview mirror from a saturn.
What's your favorite part of the job? It's kind of like a treasure hunt.
Sometimes you pop a backseat and find money Really? Sure.
gold jewelry, gold chains.
What's the coolest thing you ever found in a car you were disassembling? It could be One time we found a .
45.
A weapon? A weapon.
And found a cassette box that was loaded with drugs.
What kind of drugs? Green stuff in a bag.
I guess it was Oregano, probably.
Probably oregano.
What happened was you probably got the car of an ex-cooking expert or something.
And he was afraid somebody was gonna steal his recipe, and that's why he had the .
45.
Huh.
Ever find a body? Oh, I made up some stuff one time to look like a body part.
Get out of here.
What are you talking about? I took a deer leg and dressed it up with a white sock, put it in a boot, poured tranny oil on it, stuck it in a car, and made it look like it was a leg, and it fooled a lot of people.
You're a prankster.
It relieves stress.
It might cause a little, too.
All right, so we need a rearview mirror.
And that just pops right off, right? You got it.
It's locked.
Check the other side.
That'd be funny if it were locked.
It's locked, huh? What do you want to do? I'll tell you what Why don't you grab this hammer? Take the front glass right out.
The front glass The windshield? No, take this one out here, this car.
Pop this one right here.
You got it.
I'm sure this is not what the folks at saturn had in mind when they rolled out this particular car.
That's the way we do it at medford.
[ Groans .]
Ah, and it's got that new-car smell.
Righty tighty, lefty loosey.
If I didn't have to wear these Oh, look at this.
This whole process has been approved by a higher power.
Coming up, when things heat up at the junkyard, it's time to let off a little steam.
Every part in every car is worth money, but these cars don't get to stay here forever.
A year, maybe two years.
Sooner or later, each and every one of them is going to be turned into scrap.
But there's one part in every car that's always used.
Hit it, Mark.
Ray rotsman is the engine stripper at medford's.
Before a car is turned to scrap metal, he salvages the engine for future use.
Today's job Stripping the engine block from a Ford probe.
It's not just a job.
It's an adventure.
Now, wait a minute, I've heard that somewhere before.
But it's the truth, Mike.
It's not just a job.
It's an adventure.
You're gonna get a little taste of it today.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna drop this engine on the ground.
It's gonna come out the bottom.
And literally, the frame is just gonna hang by the shocks and actually just sway like a swing.
And then, like you see in the movies, you'll see them in an illegit chop shop.
All of a sudden, you'll see the guy come over with a torch, just cut one thing, and the whole engine will fall down on the ground.
That doesn't happen.
No, it does happen.
All right, we're going under.
Doesn't that burn? Hell, yeah.
I told you It's a dangerous, nasty job.
The rubber bushings are catching on fire.
Uh-huh.
All the fire, smoke, and showering sparks reminded me that Ray's job isn't just dirty.
It's downright dangerous.
[ Blows .]
Crap, we caught a probe on fire.
Put that fire out for me, Mike.
There you go.
That last thing we need is to have that interior catch on.
That's definitely a no-no, so we're just gonna make sure we got it all.
If you heat that baby up till she turns orange, then when you got it ready, add your oxygen and start cutting.
Should I get the far one first or the near one? Get the far one first.
Don't worry.
The engine ain't gonna come down on you.
Rowe: Oh, that guy.
All right, I'm going in.
Go ahead, cut it.
Yeah.
Blazing hot smoking metal? I got them.
All right.
Got your half-inch drive air gun.
Got 500 foot-pounds of torque, which means it's got a lot of [bleep.]
[ Whirring .]
You got it.
You had it on the first shot.
Well, I like to be sure.
This should release.
Unlike the movie, this probe's engine wasn't going anywhere in 60 seconds.
Come on, ray.
For crying out loud.
That's it.
Holy! We use a blowtorch, an air gun, and a crowbar, but it still won't budge.
Blowing on it doesn't seem to work, either, surprisingly.
[ Metal clanking .]
Finally, we come up with a very American solution Heavy machinery.
Here comes the crane operator.
We're gonna do this the easy way.
Ray has the forklift raise the engine block so we can free a jammed motor mount that's keeping the engine from dropping.
And there you are, gentlemen, your motor's on the ground.
Yeah.
But we got lucky today.
She just slipped right out.
We got lucky a forklift came by and slipped it right out for you.
Yeah, well I guess it's luck.
Sometimes you get, you know, little snafus, you know? You know what "snafu" stands for, don't you? Oh! Situation normal all [bleep.]
up.
The forklift makes a deposit in the engine graveyard, where hundreds of stripped engine blocks will fetch up to $3,000 apiece when the right customer comes through the door.
To relieve the stress of a long workday, medford's employees gather for an evening ritual.
Mark cobbles together salvaged auto parts into an ingenious rube goldberg device designed to let off a little steam, literally.
We'll just get a battery then, if that's the case.
Will the jump box work? Yeah, jump box will be fine.
That's light enough.
[ Engine turns over .]
Rowe: That's a 55-gallon oil drum that's sitting on top of an airbag that's buried in the dirt.
It's attached to some speaker wire, which, in turn, is attached to what looks like a jumper cable? And jumper box.
And a jumper box.
And unless I misunderstand the situation, Mark, when you attach those two leads, you're gonna blow up The airbag.
Yeah.
Just to end a good day.
That's how you wrap things up at the junkyard? Yep.
Hit it.
That's something you don't see every day.
That barrel's just gonna roll into oblivion, isn't it? Warm still.
Don't smell that.
The gas is very bad for you.
It went into the floor here and widened this hole right out.
Yeah, it blew a hole in the ground.
Huh.
Now, if we had a Cadillac airbag, it would be a different story.
Everybody would have been taking cover.
I am a slob 'cause I work dirty jobs we've got the mirror.
Smile.
Ladies and gentlemen, Doug glover, cameraman for "dirty jobs," out here in 4- or 5-foot seas for the last three hours.
It's only a matter of time.
Yeah, try not to puke on the camera if you can.