The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recently announced that it acquired several significant artifacts that reflect key moments in American history and culture, including items that showcase innovations in automobile and steel recycling. The collection titled Revolutionizing Recycling: The “Prolerizer” features a section from the original “Prolerizer,” a watershed invention that revolutionized recycling and is a significant piece of industrial history.
Patented in 1961, the machine could shred an automobile or other large durable consumer products in minutes, transforming recycling in the U.S. and around the world. It made recycling cars and other durables that had reached the end of their useful lives possible. Prior to this, automobile recycling was a labor-intensive process involving handheld torch cutters and alligator shears, with derelict cars becoming a widespread problem for American towns and cities.
The Prolers found a way to grind up cars, extract clean steel and send it back to steel mills to create new products. The primary invention consisted of a rotor with many hammers, powered by a large engine, that could shred entire vehicles into small fist-sized pieces that could be separated into ferrous and non-ferrous materials, providing steel mills with a superior quality of scrap to recycle into steel.
Ben Proler (1894–1970) started the family business in the 1920s, and with the help of his sons Izzy, Sammy, Hymie, and Jackie, transformed a local scrap dealership in Houston into Proler Steel, a publicly held global company. Advantage Metals Recycling (AMR) decommissioned their 1961 Prolerizer, nicknamed “Deborah,” in the summer of 2024, donating a representative part of the machine and early archival materials to the museum. The Proler family invented a new business system, and the museum’s Archives Center has collected companion photos and drawings (1964–1974).
The archival finding aid is online, and this collection is open to researchers. The Recycled Materials Association, AMR and the Proler family, museum curators, and archivists plan to continue to build this collection in the next year.
The Prolerizer hammer machine section is a gift through Joshua Jones, regional manager, Advantage Metals Recycling, Nucor Company. The Prolerizer Collection, 1964-1974, is a gift through Joshua Jones, regional manager, Advantage Metals Recycling, Nucor Company.
Photo Courtesy of ReMA.
