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

Trash shredder technology was something that was toyed with in the 1960s. They may have perfected it since then.

A lot of the trucks around here with the big companies use the tipper trailers which is just a real big open top 48' trailer and when it goes to the landfill it's put on a machine and it just gets tipped.
The ejector trailers are not nearly as common, there really only for transfer stations that have the mechanical packing ram.

The containers that go on the trains are semi common the container is backed up to a transfer station with the mechanical packing ram and it packs the container full.

What's interesting is Montogomery County, Maryland also uses the trash container trains for leaf pick up and removal.

 

So one of the things we haven't talked much about is New York's private trash haulers. The DSNY is clean and well organized, and works during the day. However at night time it's a different story. Commercial garbage is picked up by private trash companies and it's an all out free for all, with the private companies some are big and some are small, some are more legit then others and they all come out at night time.

A Propublica Article from January of 2018 talks about the inside world of private garbage hauling. Action Carting which is the largest private hauler in New York City in January of 2018 had 16,700 customers.

From what the article says and I'll put a link right here:
Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection — ProPublica

The private garbage companies are hazardous and unsafe and they seldom follow the traffic laws.

Action Carting operates 133 trucks.
Most DSNY routes are 8 hours long.
Most private hauler routes are 12-14 hours long. Usually 14 hours long and the boss tells the guys it should only take 12 hours so they bother them and pester them to hurry up. Now the bosses deny all of that.

Since 2008 statistics say Action Carting has run over and killed about 5 pedestrians.

Waste and Recycling Industry work is the 5th most deadly job in America, and when you work in New York City for a private company you spend most of your time at night hanging off the back of a garbage truck as it flies down the streets and allies. You also do a lot of walking and running. They run about 500 stops a night in the private garbage business. Usually they start off fill the truck go and dump the truck at the transfer station and then start moving again to finish the route.

 

In the article they followed a guy who worked for a company called 5 star hauling he had an awful truck it was an old unit from some city contractor who worked for some city on Long Island. He said every break down you can imagine he’s had. Fires in the hopper are an almost normal thing. The drivers door was hanging off and they run red lights and fall asleep at the wheel all that stuff.

60% of private trash company workers are minorities pulled off the street and they have no training on equipment or safety. Usually the driver says hey kid want to make $20.00 the hard way?

Being a laborer for some of these rag tag outfits is like the most dangerous job in the city. You just run down the street both sides pulling bags of garbage out of ally ways.

@Itsbrokeagain have you ever seen any of these shady outfits running around.

A lot of times they have an old garbage truck and you can see the old markings City of So and So on the door or body.
Landmark Disposal (company around here that was bought out by Rumpkey in 2011) would buy old garbage trucks from the cities. They bought a lot of Rocky Rivers 1990s Ford L9000 refuse trucks when they were phasing them out in 2008-2010ish.

 

They said on any given commercial street at night time there could be 20 some odd private garbage trucks on one block at night, they are like ####roaches almost coming out to devour the garbage.

 

NYC Auto Car Private Refuse Truck with Dayton Wheels