Inbound loads for a tire factory

[MountainMan]

I've never given much thought to tire manufacturing, but as I read this thread, and the links that were included, the question occurred to me, "what does raw rubber look like and how is it shipped?" I think it comes from a tree, when it is harvested, is it ground up and shipped in bags, curt up like cord wood or pulp wood, or is it shipped in bulk like plastic pellets in a covered hopper?

The rubber is shipped like this:



The synthetic rubber is shipped like this:



At the factory, it goes into a machine that shreds it, kneads it, mixes it and molds it into a homogenous mass with similar blocks of synthetic rubber and whatever chemicals and additives are intended as part of the batch, such as compounds to resist UV deterioration.