Sixty years ago, the Grader room at The Oliver Co-Operative Growers Exchange ( known as The Packing House ), was a gigantic, noisy, very complicated room. Belts, rollers and chains moved in every direction at ground level, waist height and over head.

At one end of  the room  apples were hand trucked in from the cold storage and far away, at the other end of the big room, the same apples were moving in on belts into another cold storage , carefully wrapped and packed in special boxes as Extra Fancy, Fancy, or “C” Grade .

How did all this happen?

Well, it was the result of a lot of hard work, by dozens of hard working people and some complicated machinery.

First about the people. The hand truckers, who brought the apples 6 boxes at a time, carefully balancing them, not to spill any. These were always male. Then the Dump Men, who dumped the apples box by box on a moving belt that took them to the sorting tables. The Sorters, females, sitting on stools on both sides of a long sorting table with lots of moving belts in front of them, the Packers, females, on both sides of the very long Grader, The Labelers, the Stampers, the Lidders, the Box boys and the Maintenance Men.

One of the complicated piece of machinery was the Grader. It stretched from the sorting tables practically to the other end of the room, just leaving enough space for moving belts and rollers to cross the room.

At 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. the sharp, loud sound of a buzzer brought everything to a stop. Recess.  Coffee, tea, and a few large trays of fresh doughnuts from the bakery, 5 cents a piece.