Random pickle thoughts, my dad worked in a pickle plant before I was born, fixing equipment and designing new machines for of all things a New York Jewish pickle plant owner. Stereotype much? So some fifty years later he still won't eat pickle relish since at least in that plant the relish came from whatever jammed in machines or got shovelled up off the floor.
I have built some pickle loading machines, actually still cucumbers then, lines the cukes up and lays them in a pocketed conveyor belt. No idea how the plant sizes the cukes, but they have very stringent size requirements, they no crap sent us test cucumbers to run the thing.