Municipal Garbage History: Los Angeles Department of Sanitation Founded 1957

Oh I have some cool pictures to show I’ll up load those when I get home.

I do landscaping or yard work on the side and I just finished up a big job. 2.5 days and I stopped for pizza on the way home.

 

20 years ago Rob Jamison took these photographs I had never heard very much about the the City of Fairview Park, Ohio's recycling program I didn't even know they had separate recycling trucks. Turns out they had these curb side sorting trucks, that had a right hand drive option. I thought they used the garbage truck fleet for everything.
(Photo Rob Jamison)
But they had the white trucks for recycling and they had a red stake body truck that old Ford that was used for picking up appliances and bulk garbage like that I originally thought they just threw all that stuff in the rear loader which is why I thought they had bought the heavy duty Loadmaster units which would have been the 3 on the end, those 3 Sterlings would have been the newest trucks the city ever owned.

I looked on Classic Refuse Trucks around the year 2000 Loadmaster was revamping there line up, the only truck Loadmaster kept in there line up was the 400. This truck is a Loadmaster 400, which is an extreme duty heavy demolition packer truck. The city owned 3 of these, Fairview always had a tendency even to this today, to buy heavier iron. So it's not a surprise to me that they bought the heaviest packer truck on the market at the time, the Loadmaster 400 was the only one unit Loadmaster carried over through the turn of the century.

I just thought they had 6 garbage trucks and used them for everything. But turns out they not only had 70 tons of solid waste haulage, then they had recycling tonnage as well, so the city to me seemed to have a bigger program then I thought, I thought they were just 6 garbage trucks and used 3 for garbage, 1 for lawn waste and 2 for recycling, but turns out the actual packer trucks were just on garbage so 70 tons of garbage lift is quite a bit, plus 30 tons of of recycling lift and a steak body truck for appliances and big bulky items like that. So they really had over 100 tons of haulage which means the city department was bigger then I thought.

 

LA is all automated now for the most part. However I think some of there people still get tips now and then. LA didn't have garbage collection till the 1950s, but they have a pretty serious department of sanitation.