Salt, Salt, and More Salt

When I rode my bike around the south end of the island last Saturday morning, I saw that they were harvesting salt from one of the condenser pans right by the road. So Sandra and I drove back later and took some action photos.

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

The dozer and front end loader scoop up the salt at the corners of the pans.


These front end loaders are really BIG. I met one of them coming the other way on the road by Margate Bay and it totally used up the whole road. The driver kindly pulled off to one side so I could get by. I could have ridden my bike right up into that giant scoop on the front end.


All the salt used to be scooped up and loaded into trucks using front end loaders like the one pictured above. But now they are using a scraper/conveyor belt loader that seems to be much more efficient. The conveyor scrapes the salt off the pan like a Zamboni machine on steroids, and dumps it right into the bulk hauler truck.


Here is a close up of the scraper and loader. It has its own powerplant, but is towed by a bulldozer. It's pretty noisy.


I have a few more salt harvesting pictures on my Club Photo site. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the thumbnails.