Compacting loose earth by dropping weights

Back in the early 70's I worked at an auto salvage yard. They used to ship the stripped bodies out for recycling. All of the hard parts had been stripped and sorted into piles. With no crusher, they could only get 3 bare bodies on their flat bed truck. which was not at all costs effective.

The owners son and I got the hair brained idea to make a 6ft x 6ft x 1 1/2 steel box. Fill it with concrete and drop it on the empty bodies. After squishing them 12 would fit on the truck.

The problem was, the crane they had was an old cable operated machine. When that 4000 pound weight was released, all of the tension in the cables rebounded. When released the main cable spool would spin so fast it would unroll too much cable, then winding it back in with no real tension caused it to get tangled in the spool.

The operator learned to keep some friction on the spool brake, but that wore the brake shoes out.

Sometimes good ideas are not really that good. Live and learn.

Compacting loose earth by dropping weights - GIF