Shovel
A shovel is one of the simplest tools a person can hold, yet it once decided whether a railroad car got unloaded in an hour or a day. A broad blade, a medium-length handle, and the strength of a single worker moved soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, and ore across centuries of human labor. Before the 1950s, this humble tool kept dozens or even hundreds of people busy on a single job. Yet the shovel hides more design thinking than its plain shape suggests. Why did one engineer become obsessed with the exact scoop size for brown coal versus gravel? How did a large animal's shoulder blade become the ancestor of a tool found in nearly every shed today? And why, despite their resemblance, are front-end loaders and excavators not classified as shovels at all?
Sheet steel and hard plastics give most shovel blades their strength, and that strength is no accident of manufacture. A blade made of sheet steel usually has a folded seam, or hem, at the back, forming a socket where the handle fits. That same fold does double duty by adding extra rigidity to the blade itself. Handles tend to be wood, with ash or maple prized as specific varieties, or glass-reinforced plastic, better known as fiberglass. The handle is usually riveted into place rather than glued or wedged. When a shovel is built to move soil and heavy materials, a T-piece is fitted to the end of the handle to improve grip and control. Every one of these features shares a practical virtue: they can all be easily mass-produced, which is why the same basic design reaches so many hands.
In the Neolithic age and earlier, a large animal's scapula, its shoulder blade, often served as a crude shovel or spade. At that distant point, the tool belonged mostly to farming. The later arrival of purpose-built shovels marked a major shift in how people moved the earth. Manual shoveling, frequently paired with picking, became the chief means of excavation in construction. The same held true for mining, quarrying, and the bulk handling of materials in industries like steelmaking and stevedoring. Railroad cars and cargo holds loaded with ore, coal, gravel, sand, or grains were filled and emptied by hand. None of these trades relied on shoveling exclusively, yet the work was a ubiquitous part of all of them, waiting to be transformed.
Until the 1950s, manual shoveling kept large numbers of workers on payrolls everywhere. Crews known as 'labor gangs' were assigned to whatever digging or bulk materials handling a given week demanded. Where a single job today might fall to a few skilled operators running powered excavators and loaders, dozens or hundreds of workers with hand shovels once did the same rapid excavating and materials handling. Because so many hands were needed, labor became a tremendous expense of operations, even when each individual worker was poorly paid. The productivity of a business was tied mostly to the productivity of its labor. That link between output and human effort still exists today, though in the past it bound a company far more tightly. In time, loaders and backhoes took over the industrial and commercial handling that shovels had carried.
Frederick Winslow Taylor, a developer of scientific management, treated the lowly act of shoveling as something worth serious study. His focus on time and motion study led him to break manual labor into far finer detail than others bothered with. Managers often skipped such analysis, perhaps assuming manual work was intellectually simple. Workers had their own reasons to resist, wary that close study would let management strip the craftsman of his right to decide his own methods. Taylor saw in that neglect a missed chance to find the best practices that would yield the highest productivity, the most value for each dollar spent. Working with colleagues in the 1890s through the 1910s, he expanded the older notion of varied shovel designs, building different-sized scoops matched to each material's density. Under his system, using one shovel for brown coal on Monday and gravel on Tuesday was no longer acceptable. Taylor argued that the gain in worker productivity, and the wages thereby saved, would offset the capital cost of keeping two shovels instead of one.
Around 1900, during the Second Industrial Revolution, heavy equipment such as crawler excavators became available, beginning the long retreat of the hand shovel from industry. The word shovel stretched to cover larger excavating machines called power shovels, which dig, lift, and move material just as their hand-held namesakes do. Yet front-end loaders and excavators, including tractors that carry a loading bucket on one end and a backhoe on the other, are not classified as shovels at all. These machines descend from steam shovels and do similar work, but the name does not follow them. The shovel also went to war in a smaller form. Entrenching tools were made by the British in 1908, and the Germans used them in both World War I and World War II.
A coal shovel typically carries a wide, flat blade with steeply turned sides, a flat face, and a short D-shaped handle, and over the years various sizes have suited different kinds or grades of coal. The snow shovel often has a very wide sideless blade that curves upward on a short handle with a D-shaped grip, with some styles built to push snow and others to lift it. A relative, the snow scoop or sleigh shovel, is a large deep hopper-like implement with a wide loop handle, made to scoop a load of snow and slide it away without lifting. The grain or barn shovel pairs a large wide aluminium or plastic blade with a short hardwood handle, built to move loose light material, though early models were a single piece of wood. The spoon shovel takes its name from its shape, a long handle ending in a small oval cupped blade for excavating deep narrow holes or lifting material from a lower spot, such as a tank. The roofing shovel is a prying tool that grew out of spading forks and pitchforks used to strip old shingles and underlayment during roof repair. Broader families round out the field: the square shovel groups types with a square outline rather than a pointed one, the scoop gathers dished and cupped designs tailored to loose materials, and the drain spade or trenching shovel offers a long thin blade with pronounced upturned side flanges for cutting trenches into the ground.
Common questions
What is a shovel used for?
A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. They are commonly used in agriculture and in archaeology to locate and excavate subsurface dirt.
What are shovel blades and handles made of?
Shovel blades are usually made of sheet steel or hard plastics and are very strong. Handles are usually made of wood, especially varieties such as ash or maple, or glass-reinforced plastic known as fiberglass. The handles are usually riveted in place.
What were shovels made from in the Neolithic age?
In the Neolithic age and earlier, a large animal's scapula, or shoulder blade, was often used as a crude shovel or spade. At that time shovels were often used for farming.
Why did Frederick Winslow Taylor study shoveling?
Frederick Winslow Taylor, a developer of scientific management, studied shoveling because manual labor was central and costly in late 19th and early 20th century industry. Working in the 1890s through the 1910s, he and his colleagues expanded the idea of different-sized shovel scoops matched to each material's density, so the same shovel was no longer used for brown coal one day and gravel the next.
Are front-end loaders and excavators classified as shovels?
No, front-end loaders and excavators are not classified as shovels, even though they perform similar digging, lifting, and moving work. They descend from steam shovels, but the term shovel does apply to larger excavating machines called power shovels.
What are the different types of shovels?
Types of shovels include the coal shovel, snow shovel, snow scoop or sleigh shovel, grain or barn shovel, spoon shovel, roofing shovel, square shovel, scoop, and the drain spade or trenching shovel. Each is shaped for a specific task, such as the trenching shovel's long thin blade with upturned side flanges used for digging trenches.
All sources
6 references cited across the entry
- 1webShovel
- 3harvnbTaylor (1911)Taylor — 1911
- 4webA brief history of the ExcavatorAnthony Davis — 2022-11-23