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

So I started reading the book Picking Up by Robin Lang who is the head anthropologist for the Department of Sanitation of New York City.

It's actually a pretty good book, a little wordy at times, but it's been an interesting book to read, she talks all about the department of sanitation how it works, and what it's mission is, stuff like that. She doesn't go into real nuts and bolts stuff that I would tend to pontificate on like why the department chooses the Heil Packer Bodies over say Leach or nuts and bolts trucker stuff, but that's all minutia and stuff that comes and goes and isn't really important to the over all operation.

Anyhow, for as big as the city of New York is the department of sanitation is actually staffed, by less then 10,000 people.

They are responsible for garbage collection:


Snow Removal:


And Street Sweeping although DSNY lingo calls it Mechanical Broom operation.

 

DSNY because over the years journalists and other trouble makers are always out to smear them is a very hard group to work with and do reports on they do not like to let outsiders into there world and they do not really trust authors and journalists.

DSNY is one of the toughest and dangerous jobs in New York City exposed to traffic all day long and it's not really the newfangled auto side loaders like other parts of the world have, it's old school rear loaders all the way.


Jobs that the DSNY does are to empty baskets,


This is one of the most hated jobs in the entire department. DSNY is one of those organizations that runs 24-6 24 hours a day 6 days a week.

Garbage, Baskets and Recycling also some food and yard waste they do it all. Just on a bigger scale then say a small suburb in New Jersey.


DSNY has garages all over New York City some have only 20 trucks while others have up to 150 trucks.
The city runs a bunch of different equipment, however most of there truck cabs and chassis are Mack truck cabs and chassis. Garbages refuse packer bodies very, but DSNY tends to like Heil, Formula 5000. They study the trucks and how they wear and the trucks that run 3 shifts tend to wear out a lot quicker then the trucks that only work 2 shifts.

There an interesting bureaucracy DSNY is really it's own army in away not much different then the police of fire fighters when looking at it from a bureaucracy perspective.

They have the ground level enlisted men which are the street level garbage truck drivers and garbage collectors.

Then they have the supervisors/officers Sargent, lieutenants who run the garages and make the schedules and design the routes and report to headquarters.

Then there are the captains and chiefs or officers and high ranking heads of the department who are in charge of planning and strategy.

It is not a civilian job and once you put on the DSNY uniform you are no longer considered a civilian.





It's actually a hard job to get, it's all seniority and civil service exam points and they get a lot of applicants it pays good money although that's relative considering what it costs to live in New York City, but it's one of those jobs that not a lot of people quit from. Although it is a peeing match when it comes to seniority and everyone is always trying to pull seniority rank on everyone else. That is a down fall of it, but you get that anywhere.

Next will talk about collecting baskets on the street which is the most hated job.

 

DSNY Heil Formula 5000

This was the DSNY's truck of choice and standard refuse hauling packer truck. Comparable to the Leach 2RII the Heil 5000 is a choice refuse packer for large scale municipal and private waste hauling operations and was and still is the DSNY's standard rear loader.

DSNY is Heils largest municipal packer truck customer.

 

Thank you for the subscription.

 

I made a mistake guys it was Robin Nagle, I was working from memory last night and screwed up my apologies.

 

So I was looking at the statistics chart from April of this year and April 2019 DSNY has collected 9975.8 Refuse Tons off of the streets of New York between all 5 burros.

 

DSNY Ranking System:
Rank Structure
There are nine uniformed titles in the New York City Department of Sanitation.

From highest to lowest, the uniformed titles are described by Civil Service Title and/or Rank;

Title Insignia
General Superintendent Level V (Director)

General Superintendent Level IV (Chief)

General Superintendent Level III (Assistant Chief)

General Superintendent Level II (Deputy Chief)

General Superintendent Level I (Superintendent)

Supervisor

Sanitation Worker

 

So here are some interesting DSNY Statistics:

Collection Trucks:
DSNY Operates 2,230 Collection Trucks (Mostly Heil Formula 5000s)

Compare that to the City of Cleveland, Ohio (Also a big Heil Customer by the way.Although the city of Cleveland has a mix between Heil, Loadmaster, Leach and Newway and Whittke for some reason the city of Cleveland likes to have a hodgepodge of trucks.) City of Cleveland which operates 75 Collection Trucks! Or the Rich well off Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Pepper Pike which operates (3) 31 yard Leach 2RII.


DSNY Operates 450 Mechanical Brooms

Compare that to the City of Rocky River, Ohio which owns 1 Elgin, Pleican.

New York City has 58 Waste Transfer Stations.


Chicago America's "Second City" only has 11 transfer Stations.
City of Cleveland, Ohio has the famous Ridge Road Transfer Station on the West Side.

$2.3 Billion Dollars is the annual cost for waste collection in the city of New York.

The City throws out 10,000 tons of residential trash a day, which is collected by DSNY. Which is equal to 3.8 million tons a year of municipal waste.

4 million tons of trash are generated each year by the city's business those are collected by private waste haulers and cartage companies.

$251.00 bucks a ton to collect garbage in NYC. That means each route which is about 12 tons costs the city $3,012.00.

$3,012 x 2,230= $6.7 million dollars a day if they run all there trucks on refuse collection routes.

Costs the city $629.00 a ton to collect recyclables.

The City has 7,200 uniformed "Sanmen" street level garbage collectors.

2014 79,000 average vehicle miles daily traveled.

New York City has 58 sanitation districts or garages (words are interchangeable) (*Nagle page 14)

Queens Collection District is one of the biggest in the city it is so big it is split into 2 garage facilities and runs 185 Collection Trucks and 72 Recycling Trucks a week.