Kar Ice Service

So I too worked at Kar Ice in the summer of 1980, a few summers befort that, and a few summers after that. The previous reviewer described the setup a bit wrong. Let me correct.
There were several rows of 20 molds each holding a 300 pound block of ice that took 2 – 3 days to create in a brine solution cooled by ammonia compressors. When the blocks are removed from the brine, the are dunked in a dip tank to loosen the blocks from the mold. After a few minutes, the molds are lifted from the dip tank and turned on their side 4 at a time to slide into the «vault».
The vault had a wooden floor, cork insulated walls covered in tar to keep the cork from disintegrating. The blocks were then dragged outside to a scoring maching that had saw blades that scored the block into smaller 25 pound blocks but kept the whole thing together and stood the block upright. The blocks were then moved back into the vault for storage. Generally, we would «pull» either 3 or 4 rows of blocks a day. To us, this was a big operation, but compared to modern ice plants, this was a small operation.
The blocks were then crushed as the previous reviewer described, but generally, the crusher would feed into an automated packager to fill either 8 pound bags, 25 pound bags, or 50 pound bags of crushed ice.
It was around 1979 or 1980 that Kar Ice brought in a «tube» ice machine and that eliminated the need for ice crushing. The tube ice machine could produce about 400 pounds of tube (roughly 2 inches in diameter and 2 inches long in a cylinder shape) every 20 minutes or about 1,000−1,200 pounds per hour. The greatly increased the capability of the ice plant to supply packaged ice for military installations (i.e. Fort Irwin) and stores throughout the high desert.
Utah Chris

I used to work for Kar Ice in the summer of 1980. They make the best damn ice in town. You might be asking yourself, ‘How hard is it to make ice?’ Well, pull up a chair my friend. I’ll tell you. Ice is fucking hard.
First remember it’s 100 to 115 degrees in Barstow in July. Inside the vault it’s 23 degrees. Before you starting thinking this is a cool job consider a 500 pound block of ice sliding into the vault where you scrape off any bits of green lime on the outside, hook it and slide it over to the scoring machine which is through a big door that leads to the spot on the loading dock OUTSIDE!
You start cool and work up a sweat inside moving big ice where it’s damp and dark and smells like amonia. Then you’re open a door to blinding sunlight and egg-​frying heat while you’re wearing boots, a hat, and a down jacket. You slide the slab of ice through the Scorer and go back inside where it really is freezing. After 20 rounds of this it’s time for THE CRUSHER!
The Crusher is a low tech machine comprised of a spinning cylinder with spikes on it. The 500-​pound slab of ice sits vertically now and you pick at it to break it into 50-​pound blocks. After separating a block you push it into the crusher which makes a lot of noise, shoots shards of ice out the other end, and akin to sawdust at a mill, spits ‘snow’ back at the loader. This would be idyllic if it weren’t for the fact that the heat of your body rising through your feet melts the falling snow which quickly refreezes on your boot. I made the mistake of wearing construction boots the first week instead of rubber boots. Anyway the first two 50-​pound blocks of the slab are chest high so they’re easy to slide into the opeing of The Crusher. As you work your way down the slab you have to bend and hoist 50 pounds, each time stooping lower.
The guy on the other end of The Crusher has been sealing 10 pound bags of ice and placing them on wooden pallets with the help of a crew. The pallets are spaced apart requiring one guy to throw a bag of ice to another guy to stack on a pallet.
Working in an ice factory in the desert is 8 hours of lifting and throwing ice, enduring extremes of hot and cold, and becoming very strong, very pale, and having a cold for an entire summer.