Taking individuals to work, school, shopping, holiday destinations or bringing them back home from a night out. Buses connect us to people and places; they improve social inclusion and provide access to education, employment and medical care. Regardless of income, age, driving ability or lack thereof, and living in a rural or urban location, most people use public transportation to reach their desired locations.
According to APTA, in the US, people boarded public transportation 34 million times each weekday in 2019. In the same year, according to the American Community Survey (ACS), 46.3% of all public transportation travelers, about 3.6 million people, affirmed to use buses as their primary commuting mode!
A life of a bus, in the US, usually lasts 12-15 years or 250,000 miles, but the condition of the vehicle determines its end of use. When the bus is deemed too old for public transportation, it makes its last journey to a metal scrap yard.
In January, Sims Metal in Pennsylvania, welcomed 50 old buses that, at the end of this last journey, will get a brand new life as something else.
The new journey of these buses officially starts here. Every single bus makes its way to Sims Metal scrap yard, carried on a hauling truck.
Once the bus is delivered, it is inspected for hazards such as fluids, gases, catalytic converter, batteries, radiator, fire extinguishers and also the tires, which are all safely removed. The bus is now considered depolluted and is safe to move on to the next step.
This is where the fun begins, the bus is now ready to be crushed with a crash crane!
The crushed material is ready to be shredded. Through the shredding process, the crushed material is reduced into smaller pieces which will go through a very sophisticated separation process to recover the ferrous and non-ferrous metals and also the other materials such as plastics and foam.
Once the steel, aluminum, plastic and all of the other materials are recovered from the buses, it is now time to prepare the materials for further recycling!
Shipped nationwide and worldwide, recycled metals will be reintroduced as raw materials in the manufacturing process, which means thousands of new goods coming to life. What seemed to be the end of 50 buses is, instead, the start of thousands of new beginnings.
Learn more about our processing capabilities.