Picking Up by Robin Lang all about Department of Sanitation New York City

I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing the construction company got a fine for that little stunt digging up the 13,000 volt feeder line.

 

Oh ha-ha that's quite alright LOL! A lot of this vocational type truck work doesn't come up on other parts of the forum and I know there are people who are interested in it, they don't make them selves known, but I do think they are out there.

I worked for a beer distributor first back in 2014 and then I applied to work in the sewer department for the city of Rocky River at the end of 2014. They did not hire although they did interview me, but no dice I wasn't hired, but I did get to go for a face to face interview at city hall, but no dice. So after that, I worked for the beer company a little bit more, decided I really didn't like that job or company and I was lucky enough I applied to work for Gordon Food Service for the second time and I got hired with them in 2015 and I've been there ever since, you may have seen some of our trucks in New York City, we don't do NYC all that heavy a couple chain restaurant accounts and that's about all, no broadline street level stuff to my knowledge.

But what's the point? Throwing cases pays well I mean the city maybe pays $40K a year, I made a little over double that this year, which is really cooking here in Cleveland, I made almost as much money as the mayor of my stupid town made so that's a pretty good living and besides my mortgage I have no debt and I don't live extravagantly now granted if I need to buy a tool or something, I buy the best one for what I need I don't go cheap on that end, but not being married or having kids $85K+ a year for a single guy is a comfortable living, but you know I told one of my co-workers at work, I said you know my next job isn't going to be throwing cases, I've done that since day one and it's been an experience to say the least ha-ha, but I'd like to try and work for the city again, but I figure I mine as well go and make my money first, I am one these people who tries to get there work behind them and tries to make hay while the sun shines as they say.

But a lot of this forum is just truck company stuff, and it's a lot of people rotating around the different companies trying to make an extra nickle and I'm out here to say hey there's more then just that, why don't you all look at infrastructure and public utilities stuff, you know thinking outside the box a little bit.

 

So @bzinger

Had asked when are we going to talk about long haul garbage haulers well the answer is right now.

Now I know that sounds odd, long haul garbage haulers, yes they certainly do exist.

Back in the 1900,s and up to about the late 1950s you had what were called open air town dumps. I think my town before they privatized the garbage in 2009ish had some kind of town dump at one point in time.

An open air dump was basically a plot of land that was open air and people just threw garbage on it.It was just a dumping waste land in the town. Then as time went on cities started collecting garbage door to door like they do now, around the 1950s and into most of the 1970s and 1980s towns collected waste refuse, because it was a public health concern.

But in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and into the 1950s not every town had an open air dump some towns had incinerators.

This is the city of Lakewood, Ohio department of Sanitation. The smoke stack building on the right is the incinerator building. It's now a recycling center, but when it was up and going it was the town incinerator although it probably hasn't been used as an incinerator in at least 60 years.

By the middle and late 1950s municipalities were catching on to the fact that incinerators and open air dumps really were not sanitary or good for the environment. So they started constructing what we have today known as the modern day sanitary landfill.

But, see incinerators and town dumps were easy and close by and all the short range collection trucks could easily go out dump and come back. It wasn't until the 1960s that the big time high compaction trucks that we have today started to hit the market. Like back then the trucks were real small 10-15 yards. Then in the 1960s they started becoming bigger and packing power was increased. Then of course the later 1960s you started getting these big high compaction rear loaders that could 1000 pounds per cubic yard. Now a days the trucks out on the road can run circles around that old stuff.

Refuse Collection 1964. The little truck was close to the dump and could go back and fourth with ease.

Garbage Truck in Long Island, New York in the 1920s-1930s.
However, as the cities became bigger, the refuse collections routes became longer and heavier. The trucks also became bigger longer and heavier. However the bigger cities and closures of open air dumps and incinerators and growing cities pushed sanitary landfills further and further out. To where the small time collection trucks would fill up and have to leave the route drive 20 miles out and back and start up again they were losing to much time during the day.

So to combat this problem around the 1960s transfer stations started popping up and become much more common.City of Cleveland, Ohio, Rocky River, Shaker Heights and Cleveland, Heights, Ohio are 4 cities in the greater Cleveland area that operate transfer stations to this day to transfer waste from collection routes to the landfills or other transfer stations. Almost all the big private haulers also have there own transfer stations Kimbal the largest family owned hauler in eastern Ohio is the only company though that uses there own semi trucks, Rumpkey, Waste Management and Republic all use either MBI, Ohio Bulk or R&J Trucking for transfer to the landfill.

The thing about Waste Management here though is they are not really big into residential stuff here in north east Ohio they have a couple contracts, but not many and they bid on very little actually most of the time they don't bid at all.

Anyhow around the 1950s and 1960s this idea of transfer stations started popping up.

Dempster Brothers Company of Knoxville, TN was the first company to really get going on the idea of the high compaction/bulk waste transfer station.

Bulk waste and dumpster systems was really Dempsters thing and they really pioneered and sold the idea of the municipal transfer station with mechanical packing ram.

This is around the time late 1950s and early 1960s ejector trailers started hitting the streets.

What happens is the ejector trailer can haul like 65-75 cubic yards of waste a really great amount equal to like 3-4 regular short range route trucks.

So like in the City of Detroit's case, the landfill was to far away from the city for the collection trucks, so the city had an open air transfer station, but they were loading non-compacted refuse into these giant dump trucks, well the trucks had large volume, but the refuse was not compacted so the tonnage they hauled was low. Plus an open air transfer station that was open 5 days a week had waste sitting out over the weekend and at night causing a health hazzard for the neighborhood around the transfer station.

However Dempster had a solution with it's packing ram and ejector trailer.


The City of Detroit in the 1960s built a transfer station with the Dempster Packing ram. The trailer attaches to the dock and the packer trucks that run the collection routes unload into the transfer station charging pit. Then the packing ram packs the trailer, the ram can pack and pack and pack until the trailer is at full capacity. Probably the equivalent of 3-4 packer truck loads.

The City of Detroit owned the transfer station and route collection trucks, but partnered with a private hauler named Aids who actually owned and operated the tractor trailer units. This was the start of long haul garbage hauling.

Now the garbage was being sent out of the city by tractor trailer ejector trailers to the landfill miles away.

The City of Detroit had 34 packer trailers on there contract in the 1960s when they started with the Dempster transfer station system.

 

There's like no loyalty to anything now a days and general contractors like that really can't be trusted a lot of them are contractor blues guys who all they do is play games and try to screw over people.

The amount of money I made this past year I don't expect to quite hit this year coming up, but who knows what might happen I can't do much better then I've done right now, but Cleveland I think has a slightly lower cost of living then New York City I think.

 

Pak-Mor

Heil


Leach all of the big manufacturers got into the transfer trailer market in the 1960s.

Pak More used these transfer trailers as mobile transfer stations.

The transfer station started the long haul garbage industry. Garbage was trucked far distances out of the city, now a days it's even further, I read an article in Trains Magazine in 2012 about Conrail Shared Assets and they were talking in that article about how garbage was becoming a big commodity for CSX to haul. You see these garbage trains every now and then.

Garbage was becoming another commodity for the railroads to haul.

That's where these long haul garbage operations came from. See anymore it's difficult to know who does what. The old system, it was the local or county government that owned the landfills and transfer stations.

The new system we have this mix, where sometimes it's private companies that own the landfills and transfer stations and other times it's the county or local government, but it's managed by a private company, and then other times it is a private company it's really hard to say anymore who owns what, because it used to be one way and now it's 70% one way and 25-30% another way.


MBI is a big time trash hauler they work for all the big companies. See like we have 2 companies Majors and Pete and Pete who are local owned trash companies that are big for the area, but small time compared to others I kind of can't believe Waste Management hasn't bought out either yet because Waste Management likes to buy out small garbage companies that do not own there own landfill. Kimble and Rumpkey both own landfills which is why Waste Management won't buy them out and that's why they have been able to stick around and grow to sizeable note.

Kimble is based out of Dover, Ohio and they do there own transfer trucking in house, where the others Republic, Waste Management and Rumpkey don't really.
Which is why these companies with the refuse trailers meant to go on the tipper have so many trucks going at once.