A Clean Sweep

So you've had a puncture. And when you take the tyre off you find a dirty geat nail. "Now," says you, "where did that come from?" Well, that's the question Dick Whibley asks himself every day of the year. For Dick drives a Ministry of Works magnetic truck around the South Island, and the amount of metal he collects off the roads is nearly sufficient to set himself up in business as a metal dealer. On the average, the powerful magnet picks up about 10,000 lbs of assorted non-ferrous metal a year. Dick and his truck covered Nelson district roads recently and we shot him at work.

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Some of his haul (files, nails, bolts, old coble, reinforcing iron, staples, and the wire spokes from street-cleaning machines).

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The magnet at the back of the truck can lift heavy chunks of metal with ease

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And once the metal is on, it stays on, as Dick demonstrated to us and Jock Ricketts