Dirty Jobs (2005) s01e13 Episode Script
Shrimper
1 [ Coughs .]
My name is Mike rowe, and this is my job.
I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty Ohh! [ Spits .]
Ugh! A hunk of crap just flew straight down my throat.
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.
Coming up on "dirty jobs" Nicely done.
i get all the shrimp I can eat.
Ugh! But first, I've got to catch them.
Look like you ice-skating? What do you think You an ice skater? Funny fisherman.
Then I go after another creature from the deep as I hunt crawfish in the remote swamps of Louisiana.
Did he hurt you? No, he didn't hurt me.
But he scared me.
And later When your car tires retire, they start a second career here.
So each of the tires in here right now has a fate.
Damn, Mark! Scared the hell out of me! Oh, god.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it ugh! Oh! [ Coughing .]
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it captions by vitac captions paid for by discovery communications good morning and welcome to the great state of south Carolina.
We're just outside of Charleston on shem creek.
It's 4:30 in the morning, a terrible time to be awake, but a great time to go shrimping.
You must be captain Wayne.
You must be Mike.
You are correct.
Nice boat.
What do you call her? Winds of fortune.
Great.
Can I come aboard? So, winds of fortune is the boat, Wayne magwood is the captain, and today we have a very special job.
We're here to help Mark Maddox from the south Carolina department of natural resources study the shrimp population in the area.
We're clear.
The information that we gather today will help determine when to officially open the shrimping season.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.
Great.
We gonna have a nice day? Looks pretty decent so far.
It'll be nice.
Think there are any shrimp out here? I don't know.
We're gonna find out.
That's the fun of fishing.
You never know.
Yeah.
I wouldn't be doing anything else.
How long now? 36 years.
And your dad did it for how long? About 50 At least 50, 50-something.
When did you become a captain? At 16.
16 years old? Well, I'll try and stay out of your way, cap.
All right, this chain this is the bottom line of the net.
This is called a loop chain.
It kind of rides down on the bottom like this.
And that pulls the net down.
This is the chafing gear.
Chafing? Chafing gear.
[ Laughs .]
I hate chafing.
[ Laughing .]
Me too.
This keeps when everything accumulates in the bag, you'll have a big ball.
You'll see it when it comes up.
And that keeps from chafing a hole in the net and let the shrimp out.
So the small net is in the big net.
Both nets have various exits for things that aren't shrimp.
Well, the small net doesn't have any device to let anything out of because it's under 12 feet.
It's always more complicated than I think.
I look up here I just see some nets.
Well, they say we got enough ropes on here to hang a snake.
[ Laughing .]
Today, we're letting out the nets in relatively shallow water, and we'll be trolling for about half an hour.
Then we'll do another drag for about the same length of time in deeper water.
About a thousand things can go wrong on a shrimp boat, huh? Watch the cooler back there.
Oh, yeah, the cooler.
God, save the beer! All right.
Oh, yeah, like that.
That could kill me.
All right.
No, that's no good.
Ow! Damn it! I am so tired of bumping into things! You paint it bright orange.
It's hard to miss.
Right at eye level.
You can't see that? Yeah, it's actually at forehead level.
Well, I have a lot of forehead.
This is a good spot for shrimp.
After dragging the nets for about 40 minutes, it was time to haul them back in and see what we caught.
Yeah.
Fine.
Now, ease it off.
Keep it out of the way and stand back.
You should have had your boots on for this.
Why is that? 'Cause this stuff is gonna go everywhere.
There you go! I don't see a lot of shrimp.
I think the water temperature's still too cold.
Watch that slippery stuff.
Sorry.
Slippery.
Look like you ice-skating.
What do you think You an ice skater? [ Laughs .]
Does it look like I'm an ice skater? It looked like you were trying to ice-skate without skates.
[ Laughs .]
Funny fisherman.
When you drag for shrimp, you pick up every other slimy creature that lives near the bottom of the ocean.
Then you pick out the shrimp by hand.
We're looking for shrimp.
I've been given this tool Which is fairly straightforward, I suppose.
I, uh I found Nemo.
Nemo's free.
Well, he will be.
A white roe shrimp.
That's what we're looking for.
What do you call these things Whiskers? Yep, exactly.
Shrimp have whiskers, huh? Shrimp have whiskers.
You gonna count his legs? Not right this minute, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
We don't have time to do that.
We got to get these shrimp on ice.
Give me a hint.
Is there a shrimp here? Are you blind, man? Oh.
Well, he was covered in mud, too.
Look at that.
He's a good one.
Do we keep him? Heck, yeah.
How we doing? Doing okay.
Good.
This is Mark.
What are you with Fish and game? I'm with the department of natural resources here in south Carolina.
And you're with us today because Because the season is not open.
And therefore, legally, you couldn't be out here to take shrimp right now.
We're testing to see how far along the white shrimp are, as far as spawning.
They look like they're pretty good size, but that doesn't have anything to do with spawning, right? It sure doesn't.
If you look at these females, you can see the ovary from the head all the way down the back.
It's starting to get some color Yellow, a little bit of brown on the edges.
So she's probably within a week or two of spawning.
The males are always ready early.
Isn't that the way of things? [ Laughs .]
You catch a lot of things when you're looking for shrimp that aren't shrimp.
But every now and then, you get a good one.
Sit there and think about it.
Think what you've done.
I think that's a shrimp.
No, that's not a shrimp.
No? What was that? That was a shrimp mammy.
A what? A shrimp mammy.
Shrimp mammy? Yeah, you got to watch it here.
Those are like razor blades.
Oh.
Where do you want Back over the side? Yeah, yeah.
No good.
This is some kind of a puffer.
He's still alive.
That's a puffer fish? Yeah, he'll blow up like a I guess you rub his belly.
I don't know how he works.
He's pretty cute.
He has sharp barbs on him.
You just got to be careful how you handle him.
Aside from the razor-sharp barbs, it's a really cuddly fish.
Yeah.
Go, puffer.
Be free.
How many legs they got on this thing? It's a decapod, so it has 10 pairs of walking legs.
Although, again, the first pair is not used for much walking.
Well, nothing beats a great pair of legs, Mark.
[ Laughs .]
That's true, that's true.
[ Laughs .]
All right, preparing for the second drop, captain? Second drop.
Right.
All right, get ready.
Come on, now.
I'm trying.
Don't let anything touch your butt.
There you go! All right.
There you go.
We got a few shrimp there.
Not many, but a few.
It's a good sign that there's a few this early.
I think the water temperature's still too cold.
Right.
'Cause we're right at the very, very beginning of the season, basically, right? Right, right.
I'm gonna tie this one back.
Then we got a big stingray I want you to get out of that net over there.
That's your job.
So, what do you want me to do here, captain? I lost the captain.
Oh, well.
I'll figure it out.
That is an ugly-looking thing.
Hey, Doug.
Hey, you're on your own, man.
I've been on my own since I got on this damn boat.
Coming up Look at that tail.
How do you move a slimy, poisonous stingray fish? Very carefully.
Then I think the little one's making a comeback.
I'm catching crawfish down in the swamp, where the mud can be a real pain, literally.
It hurts my feet.
It hurts.
There's, like, something in the mud, I think.
And later They're round, they roll, but recycling them isn't always a smooth ride.
Stinks a little.
Rowe: Oy.
Doug: We got ourselves a big one.
He could really hurt you with that tail, huh? Oh, yeah.
Oh, man, look at this.
Magwood: It's like an arrowhead.
When it goes in rips.
And don't want to come out.
And it's got poison, too.
Yeah.
Well, what's the best way to pick him up? Grab him by his nostrils.
That's his nostrils.
Quick, now.
Yeah.
If he whips that tail around, he can get you.
He can still get you.
I'm gonna throw him right over there.
Slide him a little closer to the rail.
Do it quick.
When you get ready, do one motion.
One motion.
Yeah, quick.
Quicker than he is.
One shot.
Over the rail.
There you go! Way to go, Mike! Good shot.
It kind of looks like a stomach, don't you think? Ugh.
On the one hand, it sounds pretty simple.
You take the nets, put them in the water, pull them up, and maybe you get some shrimp.
But, in real life, I mean, it's quite complicated.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
You got half a dozen cables Steel cables on the starboard side of the boat running down into the water Controlling god knows what.
You got the same thing on the port side.
It's a ton of weight you're dragging on either side, so the heading on the boat's constantly being affected.
The captain runs all over the place, doing a thousand different things.
I don't know who's driving the boat at any given point.
I can't find Doug anywhere.
He comes and goes and doesn't say a whole lot.
And suddenly I'm holding cables and wondering what the hell's going on.
It's all very exciting here on the shrimp boat.
Now, what are you gonna do with all this information? 149-3.
Basically, I've come up with a table, and I will show it to the board.
And they will decide when to open the season.
We don't actually open.
The legislature opens and closes all seasons.
We just suggest.
And the only way we can suggest is by coming out and looking at these animals and discerning, "we don't have very many of them.
"We want them to spawn out as much as possible before we let them go on them.
" Based on what you're seeing today, can you predict now when the season will open officially? About 3 weeks.
About 3 weeks from now? Yeah, yeah.
Once you get your feet in there, just sort of scoot.
What's that? Once you get your feet in there, just sort of Wade through like this.
That way you don't wind up standing on them and breaking your neck.
This one is called a hogchoker.
Early on in the colonial times, they would feed them to the hogs.
If this got in a hog's throat, it would flatten out like that and choke them.
So that's how it got its name as being a "hogchoker.
" Definitely not a shrimp.
And most assuredly nothing you want to sit on.
Horseshoe crabs are protected in this state.
They catch them, remove x amount of blood from each one, and then they have to return them to the water.
An extract from the horseshoe crab's blood is used to test intravenous drugs for bacterial contamination.
No other test works as easily or as reliably.
So, this particular animal is kind of important because it's the only one they've found so far that has a fair amount of this particular compound in its blood cell.
There's all kinds of things out there to be discovered, and the sea certainly will have a huge impact on it.
We know a lot less than we think we do, I reckon.
Yeah.
I'm afraid so.
What you're doing is you're pulling the heads off the shrimp.
Yep.
A lot of people do it at the tip.
I usually take that part there right where the head meets the body And then just squeeze.
That simple? It's that simple.
Just sort of mash down, and it pops right off.
Mash down and pop in.
'Cause most people figure that's what a shrimp looks like.
That's how they buy them, that's how they steam them, that's how they eat them.
When, in truth That's the whole business right there.
There you go.
Rowe: As we speak right now, Mark is tabulating the final catch for the day.
I don't know what he's got Got a lot of papers, a lot of figures, a lot of writing.
A lot of tracking has been going on.
A lot of ovaries have been completely out of hand.
How's it looking, Mark? We had 318 shrimp, total.
Not too good a number.
No.
But at least we saw some.
Tell me something Is there any point in me continuing to take the heads off of these? Dougie will like you better.
But, no, there isn't.
[ Laughs .]
My goal is to be on Doug's good side.
[ Laughs .]
So, in three weeks, the shrimp season will officially begin.
My job was done here.
It was time to enjoy the ride home Or so I thought.
Walk along the cable, grab that far rope Throw that rope over where the other rope is, and come back.
Bring them back to the boat.
Nothing to it.
Good luck, Mike.
The nets needed to be pulled back in.
Apparently, captain magwood doesn't have a machine for that.
Hey, funny man, that's good.
That's great.
Hey, captain comedy Onboard the good ship anguish.
Hurry up! It's happy hour somewhere! I swear to god, if I make it back there, Wayne, you and I are gonna have a talk.
How the hell do you get down there? I'm not sure I understand.
Just hold on tight.
Hold onto what? Go on out a little further.
You want me to hold your hand? Geez.
This guy is an absolute [bleep.]
buster.
Dude, use that sled as like a ladder.
Whoa! Get that rope! All you need is the end.
Well, I got the whole thing, [Bleep.]
Damn it! I don't know where to put it, Wayne! Grab the very end of the rope.
Oh, crap.
Why is he screaming at me? Throw it over the top of this cable.
That one.
You said "between.
" Underneath there you go.
Come on back.
Just like it was made for you.
Boy, that looks like it's gonna hurt.
Stand up tall.
Come on, now.
You can do it.
Reach down and get the end of that line.
Why? You need to bring both of those ends of those lines back to me.
The other end.
Keep dropping the rope.
There you go.
Just bring the end of it.
Underneath the boom, reach around and grab it.
How am I gonna get that under there? I don't know.
You did it.
What do I look like gumby? Reach down and grab the other one.
There you go.
Come on.
Keep on coming.
All right.
Stand up straight like a man.
You're getting on my last reserved nerve here now.
You look like a scared little kid out here.
I thought you were tough.
You might be tough, captain, but if my mother sees this, she's gonna track you down and kick your pirate ass.
Ugh! Well, if you're keeping track at home, that's right up there with the dumbest thing I've done today.
Not a bad job.
I've seen better, though.
[ Laughing .]
Coming up Alligators sleep on the bottom, don't they? i go to the swamp to catch crawfish but wind up as alligator bait.
Tell me a story about the funny TV host who survived.
You ain't survived yet.
You still got a long way to go.
That's hysterical.
Then [ Laughing .]
Let's crush a tire! recycling tires can be fun and full of surprises.
And that Is what's left of a tire.
It ain't good.
Technically speaking, bayou pigeon is in the great state of Louisiana, about an hour southwest of Baton Rouge.
What the map doesn't tell you is that bayou pigeon is the crawfish capital of the world.
In fact, some say it's the end of the world.
The road to bayou pigeon leads straight into the 800,000-acre atchafalaya river delta.
And when you're riding in a little boat, heading deep into north America's largest swamp, it really does feel like the end of the world.
This is Floyd guillory.
Today, Floyd has brought me to Where in the hell did you bring me? The middle of the atchafalaya swamp.
This is a beautiful place you got back here.
Thank you.
Floyd makes his living fishing for mudbugs or crayfish or crawdads or What do you call them? Crawfish.
Crawfish.
All right.
What kind of bait do the crayfish like? Well, we mostly use shad.
You got the saltwater fish Use all kind of fish.
Shad? Yeah.
That's what we're gonna be using today shad.
What's a shad taste like? I don't know, I don't eat them.
I just use them for bait.
Oh.
Okay.
These would be the shad you were talking about.
How do we make this shad appealing to the eyes of a crawdad? Just like any other thing The smell of blood.
Okay? They're not eating much bait now, so we're not gonna put much bait.
We're just gonna put one piece like this in the trap.
And we're gonna put two pieces apiece to each trap.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What's this? Dry feed.
Dry feed? It's made out of grain and stuff.
What other things live in these waters? Frogs and alligators.
Alligators? Turtles.
Floyd What's the, uh What's the procedure if we should see an alligator? Just avoid them, and they'll probably avoid you.
You ready to go? Yes.
I'm ready.
I'm ready to catch some crayfish.
Or crawfish.
Crawdads.
Mudbugs.
Crawling fish.
Where's the first trap? Front of the boat.
Front of the boat? How do you tell where it is? Did you Mark it? See that little yellow-looking flag up there? No.
No, I don't see anything.
You will in a minute.
All right.
There's the yellow tag.
So, this is it.
Now we'll start to work.
That's a crawfish pot, huh? Yeah.
Okay, what we do We got them bent.
We're just gonna take it and open it up.
Whoa.
We got a perch in it.
We don't want that in the trap.
That's a perch? Yeah, we're gonna try and get 'em out without putting our hand in there.
Was that a good pot? Not really.
Bend your thing back Your wire.
Put your trap slightly on an angle and back down like that.
So you move pretty quickly? Yeah.
How many traps you got out? About 300 right now.
300? And that was one? Right.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
We got some in there.
Just pour them in.
Shake it.
Be kind of physical with it.
Kind of physical.
All right.
Let me ask you something about this trap, as long as I got it up here.
How does it work? How do they get in, and why do they stay? You got your two flues The little holes in there.
See the little holes? Yeah.
All right.
So, why don't they just crawl out the same way they crawled in? They do sometime when the bait's gone.
A few of them do.
As long as the bait's in there, they'll stick around and keep eating it.
Right.
These crawfish traps have been in use in Louisiana since the 1950s.
Shad.
That's it.
Fold this over.
That's it.
But with or without the traps, as long as humans have been in the atchafalaya swamp, people have been catching and eating crawfish.
These crawfish are cannibals.
Right.
They eat one another sometime.
They're eating one another right now.
Well, sometime they do.
Yeah, see? They're eating each other.
They're fighting one another.
What are they fighting over? They're all going to the same place.
It just is a natural instinct to fighting.
Great big cooker in the sky.
It really is Kind of like a lobster.
Pretty much, yeah.
Miniature lobster.
Look at that.
A little Nadia comaneci there.
He's like a gymnast crawfish.
They're very strong for their size, aren't they? Right.
I think the little one's making a comeback.
A freshwater cousin of the lobster, the crawfish is found on all the continents except Africa and Antarctica.
Did he hurt you? No, he didn't hurt me.
But he scared me.
Louisiana fishermen bag 100 million pounds of crawfish every year, and half of those come right out of the atchafalaya swamp.
Make it look easy, don't I, Floyd? Sure do.
You're not the only guy that fishes for crawfish out here? The atchafalaya basin you probably got several hundred.
So, how do you know whose traps are whose? Are you the only guy with the yellow tags? No, we all use different-color flags, sometimes two or three colors together.
Do you run into much poaching? Sometimes we have it.
That can't be well-received Another man messing with another man's trap.
No.
You don't want to do it out here in the swamps, anyway.
I think I know what you're saying.
Ah, darn it.
Oh, that's mud, isn't it? Now my motor's useless.
Is that a problem? Now, normally, when you get yourself stuck, you pull yourself out, right? But what with all the extra help aboard today, why bother? Yeah, I'll let you do it.
It's a little more fun this way.
Yeah, it's hysterical, Floyd.
An absolute riot.
[ Grunts .]
Alligators sleep on the bottom, don't they? Sometime.
I'm pretty well stuck in the mud, Floyd.
Wiggle around.
It should come out.
I'd feel a lot better if I could see the bottom.
Let me ask you something How come this mud hurts wherever it touches? Once you get cleaned up, a couple of hours, you'll forget all about it.
Well, that's a fascinating observation.
But my question is, why It hurts my feet.
It hurts it hurts.
There's something in the mud, I think.
Probably some kind of bacteria or something in the water.
Doesn't it irritate you when you walk around in this? Causes a little rash and stuff.
Yeah, it feels like it's chafing right now.
Doesn't bother you? A little bit.
Later on, it'll get worse.
It makes a little rash on you.
Show me your feet.
You must get in here every day.
I got a little bit on there.
See, you got little bumps there.
That's from the mud? The mud does that.
You just scratch it till the blood run out.
Scratch it till the blood runs? No, no, no.
Don't scratch it.
Oh, don't scratch it.
That's a key distinction in the advice.
I thought you told me to scratch it.
The more you scratch it, the worse it's gonna be.
You did tell me to get out of the boat and pull it? I didn't misunderstand that? You need to get out there and pull the boat.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the victim of some ridiculously bad miscommunication.
You're doing just fine.
You got to go to that stump over that way.
Coming up Floyd, I was thinking Maybe Maybe it's time I got back in the boat.
No, you're doing just fine.
Then When you recycle tires You learn to roll with the punches.
That's unfortunate.
So, I've been pulling a boat through the atchafalaya swamp for over an hour now.
I'm hot, tired, wet, and dirty.
My feet hurt from some mysterious ingredient in the mud.
But, on the plus side, I haven't stepped on any alligators Yet.
Floyd, I was thinking Maybe Maybe it's time I got back in the boat.
You can get back in.
You did a good job.
I did a good job.
Very good.
[ Grunting .]
Well done.
Let's go.
Finally, it was time to get out of the muddy swamp and sell our catch of the day.
Well, this is Phillips seafood, the place where Floyd brings his catch every day.
This is Rick Phillips over here.
Rick, how are you? I'm hanging in there.
Good.
Rick is the main proprietor here, the big cheese.
What's this Your world headquarters? Oh, yeah, world headquarters.
Good enough.
So, basically, this is where we weigh the catch, then, right? All right.
31 pounds.
All right.
31 pounds.
Is this last one? So now we add them up.
How much money we made, Floyd? Yeah, you make good time.
So you made 172 bucks, minus the mental anguish.
Not bad at all.
I'll let you guys take care of business.
Where's this go? In the cooler.
Rick will ship most of the crawfish Floyd and I caught to restaurants and food-processing plants.
But he's cooking up some of our catch with his secret recipe so I can get a taste of good old-fashioned Louisiana cooking.
My goodness, look at that.
Holy cow.
[ Sucks .]
Ahh.
Ahh.
Well, here's what I learned today, Rick.
I learned that catching these things is a dirty job.
And I'm starting to think that eating them is pretty dirty, too.
[ Crunching, sucking .]
[ Coughs .]
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dirty job.
That's a red cedar right there, and it's beautiful.
This is a 12-ply goodyear tire.
Not so beautiful.
This is Scott sander.
Scott, we're in an illegal tire dump.
Yes.
We're in Lewis county outside of where? Chehalis.
Chehalis.
In the great state of Washington.
And what are we doing here again? Well, we're gonna clean up the tires.
They need to be hauled out of the woods here, and they're scattered everywhere.
How many tires do you reckon are here? About 90,000.
Yeah.
Is there a tool, a device, a machine that we Right here.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Is that thing gonna hold 90,000 tires? Well, actually, it'll hold about 800 tires.
Here, you better do that.
Yeah.
It's almost as though I don't know what I'm doing.
This is Lee.
Lee drives the truck.
I guess you're gonna be helping us pull some of these out, too.
Lee: Yes, I am, unfortunately.
Well, I'm glad.
For a minute, I thought it was gonna be a two-man job.
But with three of us, it'll go like clockwork.
But our job's pretty simple Pick them up and throw them in.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really simple.
They kind of bond to the ground there after a while.
Uh-huh.
That's a nice one there.
What makes it nice? Well, it's just got a lot of good stuff growing in it.
Got some tread left on it.
Do you worry about all the water and stuff that collects in them? Yeah, yeah.
'Cause it's pretty nasty if it gets you in the face.
[ Straining .]
That's a little bit heavier.
[ Grunts .]
[ Chuckles .]
Oh, this is a big one.
[ Grunts .]
You don't have any hernias or nothing, do you? Ask me in an hour.
[ Laughs .]
About 290 million waste tires are discarded annually in the United States.
In the past, millions of tires have been illegally dumped in wooded areas, ravines, and ditches.
L&s is one of over 200 companies in the United States that do this kind of work.
That's unfortunate.
Got room for one more? About one.
All right, Scott, so we got a truckful of tires here.
Yeah.
We need to get the door shut, too.
We need to shut the doors.
And then where are we gonna go? To our shop.
Pbht.
We had about 800 tires on the truck, which left roughly 89,200 more for another day.
The l&s yard in Tacoma, Washington, processes about 30,000 tires every week.
Rowe: This is like some kind of tire purgatory.
Yes, it is.
So, no matter where the tires come from From a junkyard, from a swamp, whatever The first thing that happens is they get sorted.
Right.
And you sort them out of the back of whatever trailer happened to bring them.
So each of the tires in here right now has a fate.
Right.
So it's a used tire to be sold, a tire used for fuel, or headed to the landfill.
If it's going to the landfill, it's gonna be shredded.
If it's used for fuel, it's going to the cement company.
And if it's gonna be reused as an actual tire, it essentially is just gonna be refurbished and resold, either in this country or wherever.
Yep.
They're transferred everywhere.
Coming up Come to papa.
I'm on a roll, as I take on the task of tire-sorting.
See, this is where the panic sets in.
Got to kind of watch out.
So, now, when you get a few down here, you can start going through them.
There's different grades of tires.
All right.
What am I looking at here? That one's a junk one.
It's just worn down.
There's no tread.
So it can go to ash grove.
"Ash grove" meaning the cement factory.
This has a little bit of tread on the sides here.
It goes all the way down.
They call these a "groover.
" These will be shipped out of the country, because other countries are allowed to take a grooving machine and put grooves back into the lower-tread tires.
In Ireland, that's got another 10,000 miles.
[ Laughs .]
In czechoslovakia Well, Ireland's a long ways away for a passenger tire.
But they do take the truck tires.
Oh, do they? Okay, good.
Nothing wrong with this one.
That one's probably good.
But if you look inside, if you see flakes like that, it's usually been run flat.
The rubber comes off the side when the tire's running on the ground.
So you can tell that this thing blew out and somebody kept riding on it from that? Not blown out, but it went flat, and they ran it flat.
It went flat, and they ran it.
After the tires are sorted, they're loaded into truck trailers.
Packing the maximum amount of tires into each load is critical.
The process is called "lacing," and here at l&s, there's no one better at it than Hector.
So I was pretty confident after he gave me a few pointers.
All right.
Piece of cake, huh? Bring me some tires.
We'll go kind of easy on him.
Whoa! Heads up.
Right.
I don't want to wound him with this big one here.
[Bleep.]
This is where the panic sets in.
Hector Go right there.
[ Exhales sharply .]
Gee There's a problem on the top row.
Hector's working it out for me.
Yeah.
Come to papa.
This is the part where Hector cleans up my mess.
At l&s, Mark is in charge of the truck tires.
His job is to remove their rims so that the steel can be sold as scrap metal.
To do his work, Mark uses a special piece of equipment.
Good god! Hey, Mike.
How you doing? I'm all right, Mark.
This must be the crusher.
Well, yes, it is.
Looks like something that came out of the inquisition.
Is this a custom? Pretty much Ford six-cylinder motor out of a mid-'60s Van, c4 transmission, hydraulic pump, and then a big log-splitter on steroids, pretty much.
[ Laughs .]
Let's crush a tire! Let's do it.
This is not so much of a tire-crusher as it is a rim-crusher.
Watch out for the water! The rims are first crushed in one direction.
Then they have to be turned so the crusher can hit them from another angle.
When they're finished, they just fall right out of the tire.
All right? Damn, Mark! You scared the hell out of me! Excuse me.
That's exciting.
Well, I think I understand what crushing tires is all about.
Well, yeah, but we're only halfway done.
But, wait, there's more? Oh, wait.
There is much more.
We got to get all this steel off the ground, baby.
L&s salvages about 50 tons of metal from truck rims every month.
There he is.
So, what kind of money can you get for this kind of scrap? I don't know exactly how much.
But once we fill that bin up there, it's probably worth 1,500 bucks.
I'll tell you what If they pay you by the pound You're rich.
After I finished up my duties with Mark, I hitched a ride to another part of the l&s yard, where Scott was waiting to show me the gruesome fate that awaits really bad tires.
Coming up It's the tire Terminator.
My god.
Good god.
What the hell is that? It's a barclay shredder.
A barclay shredder.
Barclay shredder.
And this, of course, is the fate that's awaiting those tires that are not good enough to be fuel or good enough to be refurbished.
Right.
It looks like a diabolical contraption.
It does its job.
Just chews them up like teeth? They just go right through.
And it just cuts a strip right through the tire.
Am I gonna feed them in there? You're gonna feed them in there.
I'll start the machine and just roll them onto the conveyor.
Great.
Oh, yeah, and you probably should put the Beautiful safety glasses we have here.
Oh.
I feel safe now.
Those are nice.
You look good, too.
Let's do it, huh? I'll crank up.
You crank it up.
Don't get too close.
Don't slip in it.
My job is not to slip into the shredder at this point in time.
Right.
Don't slip in the shredder.
Don't slip in the shredder.
Fire it up.
[ Squealing .]
Tires that aren't good enough to be retreaded will be burned for fuel at the cement plant.
My god.
But a few of these are either too big or too small for the cement plant's tire-handling equipment.
I think I understand.
These lucky doughnuts get to meet the tire Terminator.
This machine can shred about 1,000 passenger tires an hour.
It chews them up and spits them out A bad day to be a tire.
You hate to see them go so young.
See how it handles the big one.
It's time, big man.
It's time.
Wow.
Tire never had a chance.
After they're shredded, it's off to the landfill.
Hell of a way to go.
Well, I'm no expert, but i'm thinking we're pretty much done.
Pretty close.
We got a little cleanup for you to do down below.
Down below what? Right down in the front of the conveyor.
And you look like you're the man for the job.
[ Sighs .]
Roughly 10% of all the tires that l&s processes winds up going to the landfill.
That's 10%The hard way.
And that Is what's left of a tire.
It ain't good.
[ Sighs .]
In the end, no one escapes the shredder.
And so it was off to the landfill for the tires.
And speaking of tired I'm tired.
Yeah, I was tired.
Really tired.
But there is no rest for the dirty.
I was off to the ash grove cement plant, where 80% of the tires from l&s are burned for fuel.
The ash grove cement company is a state-of-the-art facility and a very dirty place.
But because it's fully automated, there's really nobody around and really nothing for me to do, which, frankly, is kind of a relief.
Ash grove uses 1.
2 tons of tires every hour as part of the manufacturing process which produces 2,500 tons of cement a day.
The tires travel on a $1 million conveyance system to their final reward A huge furnace that puts out 2,700-degree heat.
The furnace heats the limestone, Clay, and ash left over from the burned tires.
Those ingredients are mixed up in a giant rotating kiln until their molecules combine to form a new compound called "clinker.
" Later, the clinker is ground into a powder and mixed with gypsum to make cement.
So, this is where the rubber meets the road.
From steel-belted to clinker, from clinker to cement, from cement to a brand-new highway The circle is complete.
Drive safely.
I would love, love, love to see your dirty videos of you doing your dirty job.
If you have one A dirty job Send us a videotape of you doing your dirty job.
If it's really dirty, we'll put it on the air.
And if it's really super, super dirty, I'll come out and do it with you.
All the information you need is on our website, discovery.
com/dirtyjobs.
There.
Is that dirty enough for you? [ Imitating "jaws" theme .]
ba-dum ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba [ splashes .]
[ Australian accent .]
This wolf spider has the venom of 15 rattlesnakes.
If he were to bite me, I'd be dead for certain.
[ Laughter .]
What is this? [ Laughs .]
My name's Mike rowe, and I've put a pig on a pedestal.
Why? Because even though he works in the dirt, this noble creature is the embodiment of hard work, self-sacrifice, and a good-natured willingness to get the job done, no matter how dirty.
Day after day, he goes about his business without complaint.
And night after night, he brings home the bacon.
[ Pig snorts .]
I am sorry I said that.
What's on your pedestal?
My name is Mike rowe, and this is my job.
I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty Ohh! [ Spits .]
Ugh! A hunk of crap just flew straight down my throat.
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.
Coming up on "dirty jobs" Nicely done.
i get all the shrimp I can eat.
Ugh! But first, I've got to catch them.
Look like you ice-skating? What do you think You an ice skater? Funny fisherman.
Then I go after another creature from the deep as I hunt crawfish in the remote swamps of Louisiana.
Did he hurt you? No, he didn't hurt me.
But he scared me.
And later When your car tires retire, they start a second career here.
So each of the tires in here right now has a fate.
Damn, Mark! Scared the hell out of me! Oh, god.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it ugh! Oh! [ Coughing .]
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it captions by vitac captions paid for by discovery communications good morning and welcome to the great state of south Carolina.
We're just outside of Charleston on shem creek.
It's 4:30 in the morning, a terrible time to be awake, but a great time to go shrimping.
You must be captain Wayne.
You must be Mike.
You are correct.
Nice boat.
What do you call her? Winds of fortune.
Great.
Can I come aboard? So, winds of fortune is the boat, Wayne magwood is the captain, and today we have a very special job.
We're here to help Mark Maddox from the south Carolina department of natural resources study the shrimp population in the area.
We're clear.
The information that we gather today will help determine when to officially open the shrimping season.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.
Great.
We gonna have a nice day? Looks pretty decent so far.
It'll be nice.
Think there are any shrimp out here? I don't know.
We're gonna find out.
That's the fun of fishing.
You never know.
Yeah.
I wouldn't be doing anything else.
How long now? 36 years.
And your dad did it for how long? About 50 At least 50, 50-something.
When did you become a captain? At 16.
16 years old? Well, I'll try and stay out of your way, cap.
All right, this chain this is the bottom line of the net.
This is called a loop chain.
It kind of rides down on the bottom like this.
And that pulls the net down.
This is the chafing gear.
Chafing? Chafing gear.
[ Laughs .]
I hate chafing.
[ Laughing .]
Me too.
This keeps when everything accumulates in the bag, you'll have a big ball.
You'll see it when it comes up.
And that keeps from chafing a hole in the net and let the shrimp out.
So the small net is in the big net.
Both nets have various exits for things that aren't shrimp.
Well, the small net doesn't have any device to let anything out of because it's under 12 feet.
It's always more complicated than I think.
I look up here I just see some nets.
Well, they say we got enough ropes on here to hang a snake.
[ Laughing .]
Today, we're letting out the nets in relatively shallow water, and we'll be trolling for about half an hour.
Then we'll do another drag for about the same length of time in deeper water.
About a thousand things can go wrong on a shrimp boat, huh? Watch the cooler back there.
Oh, yeah, the cooler.
God, save the beer! All right.
Oh, yeah, like that.
That could kill me.
All right.
No, that's no good.
Ow! Damn it! I am so tired of bumping into things! You paint it bright orange.
It's hard to miss.
Right at eye level.
You can't see that? Yeah, it's actually at forehead level.
Well, I have a lot of forehead.
This is a good spot for shrimp.
After dragging the nets for about 40 minutes, it was time to haul them back in and see what we caught.
Yeah.
Fine.
Now, ease it off.
Keep it out of the way and stand back.
You should have had your boots on for this.
Why is that? 'Cause this stuff is gonna go everywhere.
There you go! I don't see a lot of shrimp.
I think the water temperature's still too cold.
Watch that slippery stuff.
Sorry.
Slippery.
Look like you ice-skating.
What do you think You an ice skater? [ Laughs .]
Does it look like I'm an ice skater? It looked like you were trying to ice-skate without skates.
[ Laughs .]
Funny fisherman.
When you drag for shrimp, you pick up every other slimy creature that lives near the bottom of the ocean.
Then you pick out the shrimp by hand.
We're looking for shrimp.
I've been given this tool Which is fairly straightforward, I suppose.
I, uh I found Nemo.
Nemo's free.
Well, he will be.
A white roe shrimp.
That's what we're looking for.
What do you call these things Whiskers? Yep, exactly.
Shrimp have whiskers, huh? Shrimp have whiskers.
You gonna count his legs? Not right this minute, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
We don't have time to do that.
We got to get these shrimp on ice.
Give me a hint.
Is there a shrimp here? Are you blind, man? Oh.
Well, he was covered in mud, too.
Look at that.
He's a good one.
Do we keep him? Heck, yeah.
How we doing? Doing okay.
Good.
This is Mark.
What are you with Fish and game? I'm with the department of natural resources here in south Carolina.
And you're with us today because Because the season is not open.
And therefore, legally, you couldn't be out here to take shrimp right now.
We're testing to see how far along the white shrimp are, as far as spawning.
They look like they're pretty good size, but that doesn't have anything to do with spawning, right? It sure doesn't.
If you look at these females, you can see the ovary from the head all the way down the back.
It's starting to get some color Yellow, a little bit of brown on the edges.
So she's probably within a week or two of spawning.
The males are always ready early.
Isn't that the way of things? [ Laughs .]
You catch a lot of things when you're looking for shrimp that aren't shrimp.
But every now and then, you get a good one.
Sit there and think about it.
Think what you've done.
I think that's a shrimp.
No, that's not a shrimp.
No? What was that? That was a shrimp mammy.
A what? A shrimp mammy.
Shrimp mammy? Yeah, you got to watch it here.
Those are like razor blades.
Oh.
Where do you want Back over the side? Yeah, yeah.
No good.
This is some kind of a puffer.
He's still alive.
That's a puffer fish? Yeah, he'll blow up like a I guess you rub his belly.
I don't know how he works.
He's pretty cute.
He has sharp barbs on him.
You just got to be careful how you handle him.
Aside from the razor-sharp barbs, it's a really cuddly fish.
Yeah.
Go, puffer.
Be free.
How many legs they got on this thing? It's a decapod, so it has 10 pairs of walking legs.
Although, again, the first pair is not used for much walking.
Well, nothing beats a great pair of legs, Mark.
[ Laughs .]
That's true, that's true.
[ Laughs .]
All right, preparing for the second drop, captain? Second drop.
Right.
All right, get ready.
Come on, now.
I'm trying.
Don't let anything touch your butt.
There you go! All right.
There you go.
We got a few shrimp there.
Not many, but a few.
It's a good sign that there's a few this early.
I think the water temperature's still too cold.
Right.
'Cause we're right at the very, very beginning of the season, basically, right? Right, right.
I'm gonna tie this one back.
Then we got a big stingray I want you to get out of that net over there.
That's your job.
So, what do you want me to do here, captain? I lost the captain.
Oh, well.
I'll figure it out.
That is an ugly-looking thing.
Hey, Doug.
Hey, you're on your own, man.
I've been on my own since I got on this damn boat.
Coming up Look at that tail.
How do you move a slimy, poisonous stingray fish? Very carefully.
Then I think the little one's making a comeback.
I'm catching crawfish down in the swamp, where the mud can be a real pain, literally.
It hurts my feet.
It hurts.
There's, like, something in the mud, I think.
And later They're round, they roll, but recycling them isn't always a smooth ride.
Stinks a little.
Rowe: Oy.
Doug: We got ourselves a big one.
He could really hurt you with that tail, huh? Oh, yeah.
Oh, man, look at this.
Magwood: It's like an arrowhead.
When it goes in rips.
And don't want to come out.
And it's got poison, too.
Yeah.
Well, what's the best way to pick him up? Grab him by his nostrils.
That's his nostrils.
Quick, now.
Yeah.
If he whips that tail around, he can get you.
He can still get you.
I'm gonna throw him right over there.
Slide him a little closer to the rail.
Do it quick.
When you get ready, do one motion.
One motion.
Yeah, quick.
Quicker than he is.
One shot.
Over the rail.
There you go! Way to go, Mike! Good shot.
It kind of looks like a stomach, don't you think? Ugh.
On the one hand, it sounds pretty simple.
You take the nets, put them in the water, pull them up, and maybe you get some shrimp.
But, in real life, I mean, it's quite complicated.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
You got half a dozen cables Steel cables on the starboard side of the boat running down into the water Controlling god knows what.
You got the same thing on the port side.
It's a ton of weight you're dragging on either side, so the heading on the boat's constantly being affected.
The captain runs all over the place, doing a thousand different things.
I don't know who's driving the boat at any given point.
I can't find Doug anywhere.
He comes and goes and doesn't say a whole lot.
And suddenly I'm holding cables and wondering what the hell's going on.
It's all very exciting here on the shrimp boat.
Now, what are you gonna do with all this information? 149-3.
Basically, I've come up with a table, and I will show it to the board.
And they will decide when to open the season.
We don't actually open.
The legislature opens and closes all seasons.
We just suggest.
And the only way we can suggest is by coming out and looking at these animals and discerning, "we don't have very many of them.
"We want them to spawn out as much as possible before we let them go on them.
" Based on what you're seeing today, can you predict now when the season will open officially? About 3 weeks.
About 3 weeks from now? Yeah, yeah.
Once you get your feet in there, just sort of scoot.
What's that? Once you get your feet in there, just sort of Wade through like this.
That way you don't wind up standing on them and breaking your neck.
This one is called a hogchoker.
Early on in the colonial times, they would feed them to the hogs.
If this got in a hog's throat, it would flatten out like that and choke them.
So that's how it got its name as being a "hogchoker.
" Definitely not a shrimp.
And most assuredly nothing you want to sit on.
Horseshoe crabs are protected in this state.
They catch them, remove x amount of blood from each one, and then they have to return them to the water.
An extract from the horseshoe crab's blood is used to test intravenous drugs for bacterial contamination.
No other test works as easily or as reliably.
So, this particular animal is kind of important because it's the only one they've found so far that has a fair amount of this particular compound in its blood cell.
There's all kinds of things out there to be discovered, and the sea certainly will have a huge impact on it.
We know a lot less than we think we do, I reckon.
Yeah.
I'm afraid so.
What you're doing is you're pulling the heads off the shrimp.
Yep.
A lot of people do it at the tip.
I usually take that part there right where the head meets the body And then just squeeze.
That simple? It's that simple.
Just sort of mash down, and it pops right off.
Mash down and pop in.
'Cause most people figure that's what a shrimp looks like.
That's how they buy them, that's how they steam them, that's how they eat them.
When, in truth That's the whole business right there.
There you go.
Rowe: As we speak right now, Mark is tabulating the final catch for the day.
I don't know what he's got Got a lot of papers, a lot of figures, a lot of writing.
A lot of tracking has been going on.
A lot of ovaries have been completely out of hand.
How's it looking, Mark? We had 318 shrimp, total.
Not too good a number.
No.
But at least we saw some.
Tell me something Is there any point in me continuing to take the heads off of these? Dougie will like you better.
But, no, there isn't.
[ Laughs .]
My goal is to be on Doug's good side.
[ Laughs .]
So, in three weeks, the shrimp season will officially begin.
My job was done here.
It was time to enjoy the ride home Or so I thought.
Walk along the cable, grab that far rope Throw that rope over where the other rope is, and come back.
Bring them back to the boat.
Nothing to it.
Good luck, Mike.
The nets needed to be pulled back in.
Apparently, captain magwood doesn't have a machine for that.
Hey, funny man, that's good.
That's great.
Hey, captain comedy Onboard the good ship anguish.
Hurry up! It's happy hour somewhere! I swear to god, if I make it back there, Wayne, you and I are gonna have a talk.
How the hell do you get down there? I'm not sure I understand.
Just hold on tight.
Hold onto what? Go on out a little further.
You want me to hold your hand? Geez.
This guy is an absolute [bleep.]
buster.
Dude, use that sled as like a ladder.
Whoa! Get that rope! All you need is the end.
Well, I got the whole thing, [Bleep.]
Damn it! I don't know where to put it, Wayne! Grab the very end of the rope.
Oh, crap.
Why is he screaming at me? Throw it over the top of this cable.
That one.
You said "between.
" Underneath there you go.
Come on back.
Just like it was made for you.
Boy, that looks like it's gonna hurt.
Stand up tall.
Come on, now.
You can do it.
Reach down and get the end of that line.
Why? You need to bring both of those ends of those lines back to me.
The other end.
Keep dropping the rope.
There you go.
Just bring the end of it.
Underneath the boom, reach around and grab it.
How am I gonna get that under there? I don't know.
You did it.
What do I look like gumby? Reach down and grab the other one.
There you go.
Come on.
Keep on coming.
All right.
Stand up straight like a man.
You're getting on my last reserved nerve here now.
You look like a scared little kid out here.
I thought you were tough.
You might be tough, captain, but if my mother sees this, she's gonna track you down and kick your pirate ass.
Ugh! Well, if you're keeping track at home, that's right up there with the dumbest thing I've done today.
Not a bad job.
I've seen better, though.
[ Laughing .]
Coming up Alligators sleep on the bottom, don't they? i go to the swamp to catch crawfish but wind up as alligator bait.
Tell me a story about the funny TV host who survived.
You ain't survived yet.
You still got a long way to go.
That's hysterical.
Then [ Laughing .]
Let's crush a tire! recycling tires can be fun and full of surprises.
And that Is what's left of a tire.
It ain't good.
Technically speaking, bayou pigeon is in the great state of Louisiana, about an hour southwest of Baton Rouge.
What the map doesn't tell you is that bayou pigeon is the crawfish capital of the world.
In fact, some say it's the end of the world.
The road to bayou pigeon leads straight into the 800,000-acre atchafalaya river delta.
And when you're riding in a little boat, heading deep into north America's largest swamp, it really does feel like the end of the world.
This is Floyd guillory.
Today, Floyd has brought me to Where in the hell did you bring me? The middle of the atchafalaya swamp.
This is a beautiful place you got back here.
Thank you.
Floyd makes his living fishing for mudbugs or crayfish or crawdads or What do you call them? Crawfish.
Crawfish.
All right.
What kind of bait do the crayfish like? Well, we mostly use shad.
You got the saltwater fish Use all kind of fish.
Shad? Yeah.
That's what we're gonna be using today shad.
What's a shad taste like? I don't know, I don't eat them.
I just use them for bait.
Oh.
Okay.
These would be the shad you were talking about.
How do we make this shad appealing to the eyes of a crawdad? Just like any other thing The smell of blood.
Okay? They're not eating much bait now, so we're not gonna put much bait.
We're just gonna put one piece like this in the trap.
And we're gonna put two pieces apiece to each trap.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What's this? Dry feed.
Dry feed? It's made out of grain and stuff.
What other things live in these waters? Frogs and alligators.
Alligators? Turtles.
Floyd What's the, uh What's the procedure if we should see an alligator? Just avoid them, and they'll probably avoid you.
You ready to go? Yes.
I'm ready.
I'm ready to catch some crayfish.
Or crawfish.
Crawdads.
Mudbugs.
Crawling fish.
Where's the first trap? Front of the boat.
Front of the boat? How do you tell where it is? Did you Mark it? See that little yellow-looking flag up there? No.
No, I don't see anything.
You will in a minute.
All right.
There's the yellow tag.
So, this is it.
Now we'll start to work.
That's a crawfish pot, huh? Yeah.
Okay, what we do We got them bent.
We're just gonna take it and open it up.
Whoa.
We got a perch in it.
We don't want that in the trap.
That's a perch? Yeah, we're gonna try and get 'em out without putting our hand in there.
Was that a good pot? Not really.
Bend your thing back Your wire.
Put your trap slightly on an angle and back down like that.
So you move pretty quickly? Yeah.
How many traps you got out? About 300 right now.
300? And that was one? Right.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
We got some in there.
Just pour them in.
Shake it.
Be kind of physical with it.
Kind of physical.
All right.
Let me ask you something about this trap, as long as I got it up here.
How does it work? How do they get in, and why do they stay? You got your two flues The little holes in there.
See the little holes? Yeah.
All right.
So, why don't they just crawl out the same way they crawled in? They do sometime when the bait's gone.
A few of them do.
As long as the bait's in there, they'll stick around and keep eating it.
Right.
These crawfish traps have been in use in Louisiana since the 1950s.
Shad.
That's it.
Fold this over.
That's it.
But with or without the traps, as long as humans have been in the atchafalaya swamp, people have been catching and eating crawfish.
These crawfish are cannibals.
Right.
They eat one another sometime.
They're eating one another right now.
Well, sometime they do.
Yeah, see? They're eating each other.
They're fighting one another.
What are they fighting over? They're all going to the same place.
It just is a natural instinct to fighting.
Great big cooker in the sky.
It really is Kind of like a lobster.
Pretty much, yeah.
Miniature lobster.
Look at that.
A little Nadia comaneci there.
He's like a gymnast crawfish.
They're very strong for their size, aren't they? Right.
I think the little one's making a comeback.
A freshwater cousin of the lobster, the crawfish is found on all the continents except Africa and Antarctica.
Did he hurt you? No, he didn't hurt me.
But he scared me.
Louisiana fishermen bag 100 million pounds of crawfish every year, and half of those come right out of the atchafalaya swamp.
Make it look easy, don't I, Floyd? Sure do.
You're not the only guy that fishes for crawfish out here? The atchafalaya basin you probably got several hundred.
So, how do you know whose traps are whose? Are you the only guy with the yellow tags? No, we all use different-color flags, sometimes two or three colors together.
Do you run into much poaching? Sometimes we have it.
That can't be well-received Another man messing with another man's trap.
No.
You don't want to do it out here in the swamps, anyway.
I think I know what you're saying.
Ah, darn it.
Oh, that's mud, isn't it? Now my motor's useless.
Is that a problem? Now, normally, when you get yourself stuck, you pull yourself out, right? But what with all the extra help aboard today, why bother? Yeah, I'll let you do it.
It's a little more fun this way.
Yeah, it's hysterical, Floyd.
An absolute riot.
[ Grunts .]
Alligators sleep on the bottom, don't they? Sometime.
I'm pretty well stuck in the mud, Floyd.
Wiggle around.
It should come out.
I'd feel a lot better if I could see the bottom.
Let me ask you something How come this mud hurts wherever it touches? Once you get cleaned up, a couple of hours, you'll forget all about it.
Well, that's a fascinating observation.
But my question is, why It hurts my feet.
It hurts it hurts.
There's something in the mud, I think.
Probably some kind of bacteria or something in the water.
Doesn't it irritate you when you walk around in this? Causes a little rash and stuff.
Yeah, it feels like it's chafing right now.
Doesn't bother you? A little bit.
Later on, it'll get worse.
It makes a little rash on you.
Show me your feet.
You must get in here every day.
I got a little bit on there.
See, you got little bumps there.
That's from the mud? The mud does that.
You just scratch it till the blood run out.
Scratch it till the blood runs? No, no, no.
Don't scratch it.
Oh, don't scratch it.
That's a key distinction in the advice.
I thought you told me to scratch it.
The more you scratch it, the worse it's gonna be.
You did tell me to get out of the boat and pull it? I didn't misunderstand that? You need to get out there and pull the boat.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the victim of some ridiculously bad miscommunication.
You're doing just fine.
You got to go to that stump over that way.
Coming up Floyd, I was thinking Maybe Maybe it's time I got back in the boat.
No, you're doing just fine.
Then When you recycle tires You learn to roll with the punches.
That's unfortunate.
So, I've been pulling a boat through the atchafalaya swamp for over an hour now.
I'm hot, tired, wet, and dirty.
My feet hurt from some mysterious ingredient in the mud.
But, on the plus side, I haven't stepped on any alligators Yet.
Floyd, I was thinking Maybe Maybe it's time I got back in the boat.
You can get back in.
You did a good job.
I did a good job.
Very good.
[ Grunting .]
Well done.
Let's go.
Finally, it was time to get out of the muddy swamp and sell our catch of the day.
Well, this is Phillips seafood, the place where Floyd brings his catch every day.
This is Rick Phillips over here.
Rick, how are you? I'm hanging in there.
Good.
Rick is the main proprietor here, the big cheese.
What's this Your world headquarters? Oh, yeah, world headquarters.
Good enough.
So, basically, this is where we weigh the catch, then, right? All right.
31 pounds.
All right.
31 pounds.
Is this last one? So now we add them up.
How much money we made, Floyd? Yeah, you make good time.
So you made 172 bucks, minus the mental anguish.
Not bad at all.
I'll let you guys take care of business.
Where's this go? In the cooler.
Rick will ship most of the crawfish Floyd and I caught to restaurants and food-processing plants.
But he's cooking up some of our catch with his secret recipe so I can get a taste of good old-fashioned Louisiana cooking.
My goodness, look at that.
Holy cow.
[ Sucks .]
Ahh.
Ahh.
Well, here's what I learned today, Rick.
I learned that catching these things is a dirty job.
And I'm starting to think that eating them is pretty dirty, too.
[ Crunching, sucking .]
[ Coughs .]
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dirty job.
That's a red cedar right there, and it's beautiful.
This is a 12-ply goodyear tire.
Not so beautiful.
This is Scott sander.
Scott, we're in an illegal tire dump.
Yes.
We're in Lewis county outside of where? Chehalis.
Chehalis.
In the great state of Washington.
And what are we doing here again? Well, we're gonna clean up the tires.
They need to be hauled out of the woods here, and they're scattered everywhere.
How many tires do you reckon are here? About 90,000.
Yeah.
Is there a tool, a device, a machine that we Right here.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Is that thing gonna hold 90,000 tires? Well, actually, it'll hold about 800 tires.
Here, you better do that.
Yeah.
It's almost as though I don't know what I'm doing.
This is Lee.
Lee drives the truck.
I guess you're gonna be helping us pull some of these out, too.
Lee: Yes, I am, unfortunately.
Well, I'm glad.
For a minute, I thought it was gonna be a two-man job.
But with three of us, it'll go like clockwork.
But our job's pretty simple Pick them up and throw them in.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really simple.
They kind of bond to the ground there after a while.
Uh-huh.
That's a nice one there.
What makes it nice? Well, it's just got a lot of good stuff growing in it.
Got some tread left on it.
Do you worry about all the water and stuff that collects in them? Yeah, yeah.
'Cause it's pretty nasty if it gets you in the face.
[ Straining .]
That's a little bit heavier.
[ Grunts .]
[ Chuckles .]
Oh, this is a big one.
[ Grunts .]
You don't have any hernias or nothing, do you? Ask me in an hour.
[ Laughs .]
About 290 million waste tires are discarded annually in the United States.
In the past, millions of tires have been illegally dumped in wooded areas, ravines, and ditches.
L&s is one of over 200 companies in the United States that do this kind of work.
That's unfortunate.
Got room for one more? About one.
All right, Scott, so we got a truckful of tires here.
Yeah.
We need to get the door shut, too.
We need to shut the doors.
And then where are we gonna go? To our shop.
Pbht.
We had about 800 tires on the truck, which left roughly 89,200 more for another day.
The l&s yard in Tacoma, Washington, processes about 30,000 tires every week.
Rowe: This is like some kind of tire purgatory.
Yes, it is.
So, no matter where the tires come from From a junkyard, from a swamp, whatever The first thing that happens is they get sorted.
Right.
And you sort them out of the back of whatever trailer happened to bring them.
So each of the tires in here right now has a fate.
Right.
So it's a used tire to be sold, a tire used for fuel, or headed to the landfill.
If it's going to the landfill, it's gonna be shredded.
If it's used for fuel, it's going to the cement company.
And if it's gonna be reused as an actual tire, it essentially is just gonna be refurbished and resold, either in this country or wherever.
Yep.
They're transferred everywhere.
Coming up Come to papa.
I'm on a roll, as I take on the task of tire-sorting.
See, this is where the panic sets in.
Got to kind of watch out.
So, now, when you get a few down here, you can start going through them.
There's different grades of tires.
All right.
What am I looking at here? That one's a junk one.
It's just worn down.
There's no tread.
So it can go to ash grove.
"Ash grove" meaning the cement factory.
This has a little bit of tread on the sides here.
It goes all the way down.
They call these a "groover.
" These will be shipped out of the country, because other countries are allowed to take a grooving machine and put grooves back into the lower-tread tires.
In Ireland, that's got another 10,000 miles.
[ Laughs .]
In czechoslovakia Well, Ireland's a long ways away for a passenger tire.
But they do take the truck tires.
Oh, do they? Okay, good.
Nothing wrong with this one.
That one's probably good.
But if you look inside, if you see flakes like that, it's usually been run flat.
The rubber comes off the side when the tire's running on the ground.
So you can tell that this thing blew out and somebody kept riding on it from that? Not blown out, but it went flat, and they ran it flat.
It went flat, and they ran it.
After the tires are sorted, they're loaded into truck trailers.
Packing the maximum amount of tires into each load is critical.
The process is called "lacing," and here at l&s, there's no one better at it than Hector.
So I was pretty confident after he gave me a few pointers.
All right.
Piece of cake, huh? Bring me some tires.
We'll go kind of easy on him.
Whoa! Heads up.
Right.
I don't want to wound him with this big one here.
[Bleep.]
This is where the panic sets in.
Hector Go right there.
[ Exhales sharply .]
Gee There's a problem on the top row.
Hector's working it out for me.
Yeah.
Come to papa.
This is the part where Hector cleans up my mess.
At l&s, Mark is in charge of the truck tires.
His job is to remove their rims so that the steel can be sold as scrap metal.
To do his work, Mark uses a special piece of equipment.
Good god! Hey, Mike.
How you doing? I'm all right, Mark.
This must be the crusher.
Well, yes, it is.
Looks like something that came out of the inquisition.
Is this a custom? Pretty much Ford six-cylinder motor out of a mid-'60s Van, c4 transmission, hydraulic pump, and then a big log-splitter on steroids, pretty much.
[ Laughs .]
Let's crush a tire! Let's do it.
This is not so much of a tire-crusher as it is a rim-crusher.
Watch out for the water! The rims are first crushed in one direction.
Then they have to be turned so the crusher can hit them from another angle.
When they're finished, they just fall right out of the tire.
All right? Damn, Mark! You scared the hell out of me! Excuse me.
That's exciting.
Well, I think I understand what crushing tires is all about.
Well, yeah, but we're only halfway done.
But, wait, there's more? Oh, wait.
There is much more.
We got to get all this steel off the ground, baby.
L&s salvages about 50 tons of metal from truck rims every month.
There he is.
So, what kind of money can you get for this kind of scrap? I don't know exactly how much.
But once we fill that bin up there, it's probably worth 1,500 bucks.
I'll tell you what If they pay you by the pound You're rich.
After I finished up my duties with Mark, I hitched a ride to another part of the l&s yard, where Scott was waiting to show me the gruesome fate that awaits really bad tires.
Coming up It's the tire Terminator.
My god.
Good god.
What the hell is that? It's a barclay shredder.
A barclay shredder.
Barclay shredder.
And this, of course, is the fate that's awaiting those tires that are not good enough to be fuel or good enough to be refurbished.
Right.
It looks like a diabolical contraption.
It does its job.
Just chews them up like teeth? They just go right through.
And it just cuts a strip right through the tire.
Am I gonna feed them in there? You're gonna feed them in there.
I'll start the machine and just roll them onto the conveyor.
Great.
Oh, yeah, and you probably should put the Beautiful safety glasses we have here.
Oh.
I feel safe now.
Those are nice.
You look good, too.
Let's do it, huh? I'll crank up.
You crank it up.
Don't get too close.
Don't slip in it.
My job is not to slip into the shredder at this point in time.
Right.
Don't slip in the shredder.
Don't slip in the shredder.
Fire it up.
[ Squealing .]
Tires that aren't good enough to be retreaded will be burned for fuel at the cement plant.
My god.
But a few of these are either too big or too small for the cement plant's tire-handling equipment.
I think I understand.
These lucky doughnuts get to meet the tire Terminator.
This machine can shred about 1,000 passenger tires an hour.
It chews them up and spits them out A bad day to be a tire.
You hate to see them go so young.
See how it handles the big one.
It's time, big man.
It's time.
Wow.
Tire never had a chance.
After they're shredded, it's off to the landfill.
Hell of a way to go.
Well, I'm no expert, but i'm thinking we're pretty much done.
Pretty close.
We got a little cleanup for you to do down below.
Down below what? Right down in the front of the conveyor.
And you look like you're the man for the job.
[ Sighs .]
Roughly 10% of all the tires that l&s processes winds up going to the landfill.
That's 10%The hard way.
And that Is what's left of a tire.
It ain't good.
[ Sighs .]
In the end, no one escapes the shredder.
And so it was off to the landfill for the tires.
And speaking of tired I'm tired.
Yeah, I was tired.
Really tired.
But there is no rest for the dirty.
I was off to the ash grove cement plant, where 80% of the tires from l&s are burned for fuel.
The ash grove cement company is a state-of-the-art facility and a very dirty place.
But because it's fully automated, there's really nobody around and really nothing for me to do, which, frankly, is kind of a relief.
Ash grove uses 1.
2 tons of tires every hour as part of the manufacturing process which produces 2,500 tons of cement a day.
The tires travel on a $1 million conveyance system to their final reward A huge furnace that puts out 2,700-degree heat.
The furnace heats the limestone, Clay, and ash left over from the burned tires.
Those ingredients are mixed up in a giant rotating kiln until their molecules combine to form a new compound called "clinker.
" Later, the clinker is ground into a powder and mixed with gypsum to make cement.
So, this is where the rubber meets the road.
From steel-belted to clinker, from clinker to cement, from cement to a brand-new highway The circle is complete.
Drive safely.
I would love, love, love to see your dirty videos of you doing your dirty job.
If you have one A dirty job Send us a videotape of you doing your dirty job.
If it's really dirty, we'll put it on the air.
And if it's really super, super dirty, I'll come out and do it with you.
All the information you need is on our website, discovery.
com/dirtyjobs.
There.
Is that dirty enough for you? [ Imitating "jaws" theme .]
ba-dum ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba [ splashes .]
[ Australian accent .]
This wolf spider has the venom of 15 rattlesnakes.
If he were to bite me, I'd be dead for certain.
[ Laughter .]
What is this? [ Laughs .]
My name's Mike rowe, and I've put a pig on a pedestal.
Why? Because even though he works in the dirt, this noble creature is the embodiment of hard work, self-sacrifice, and a good-natured willingness to get the job done, no matter how dirty.
Day after day, he goes about his business without complaint.
And night after night, he brings home the bacon.
[ Pig snorts .]
I am sorry I said that.
What's on your pedestal?