The beet goes on

After living in the valley for 14 years now, I figured it was about time to participate in the fall sugar beet harvest. I'm driving truck for a grower near Hillsboro. Load beets, drive, dump beets, drive, load beets, drive, dump...repeat for 12 hours. I snapped a few random pictures today. It'll probably be pretty quiet on the blog front for a while until harvest is done.

Following the beet lifter:


One of six pilers at the processing plant. Yes, that is a LOT of beets.


Ha. Ha.


I discovered a new smell today. On my first run into the plant my air brakes cammed over and caught fire at the weigh scale. After the flames were put out by the fieldman I weighed in then limped the truck out of the way until the brakes stopped smoking. I was able to get to the piler and dump my load, and that's when I discovered the new smell...burnt brakes and processed sugar beets. It's, uh, nasty.
Long story short, we were able to get the truck to the shop for repairs and I spent the rest of the day driving a backup truck.