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Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 6

After an 18 months’ tour over all the other main highways of New Zealand, the Main Highways Board’s electro-magnetic nail-collecting apparatus is again working on the mam roads of the Rotorua district. This machine, consisting of a 120-volt generator worked by an eight horse-power motor-car engine, mounted on the back of a large truck, and supplying current to an iron magnet carried beneath the tail of the lorry, is capable of picking up any iron or steel object on the surface over which it travels, even though the object may be covered by several inches of loose metal. In the last 22 miles from Hamilton it picked up nearly two bucknets of nails, loose wire, nuts, bolts, and tobacco tins, while in cleaning up the Palmerston North showgrounds it attracted six hundred-weight and a half of metal in various shapes and forms.