today scrap tire recyclers are found across the entire country including this modern plant in Southern California lakyn has been in business since 1918 the company started in Chicago by my great-grandfather Abraham Lincoln and since then my grandfather and father and uncle have all been a major part of the business we do all of our sprat fire processing indoors under a fire protection system protected from the elements basically when a tire hits this facility it lives for about 90 seconds until its end life is determined and it's out when the trucks pull in or put these tires onto conveyors tires then get inspected according to size makeup up the tire tires then go on to the overhead conveyor systems which take the tires over to one of our three shredders the tire shredders are equipped with rows of sharp interlocking carbide steel blade the blades extreme strength and sharpness is reflected in the strict tolerances they utilize the distance between the opposing rows of blades can be as close as three one thousandth of an inch this is important when shredding tires into specific sizes for different applications the primary shredding is done by a Barclay 6 inch shredder which means that the blades are 6 inches apart and they make a very rough cut in the tire after the primary shredder they can be sent to one of our two columbus mccannon secondary shredders those are typically 2 inch shredders which make a much smaller cut in the primary barclays shredder that we can then continue shredding through those Columbus McKinnon shredders to ultimately come out with all the pieces being whatever size we have the screen set up tires are designed to quite very forces are being imposed upon them by this machine the amount of energy required is part of this process involves removing all the tires steel belt from the reclaimed rubber to expedite this a new high-tech system has emerged