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

The older Vactors all have a PTO you have to engage on the dash, it puts the truck in 4th gear to drive it. Max engine speed is 1500 or so, blower speed operating Max is 2100, design speed is 2500. It engages the engine fan as well so super loud, over 103-5 db. We all have Allison 3000 transmissions.

The two newer Vac-Cons have the PTO direct drive right off the crankshaft in the front. It's constantly being driven and even in bypass mode it turns the truck into a real gas guzzler. They are nicely built however. The newer design centrifugal blower we use is much more powerful compared to the older Roots positive displacement blowers (think of a big twin screw blower atop a Ford Mustang engine etc), I usually run the blower at stage 1 or 2 (it has 4 modes) and even on low power it still has crazy vacuum and will pull large objects from the corner of manholes with ease. Again, it comes down to owner use. Some guys will turn it to Max power on stage 4 for no reason....just wears parts out faster. But what do they care...not their truck right?

 

Hey mike when do we get to talk " trash " about otr garbage haulers like kephart and gary wills ?
80 in penn used to be loaded with garbage haulers but ya dont see many these days .

 

Sounds def my like company. Logical solution ? Nah no way. Have an outrageous stupid plan? Full steam ahead!

Then it's...why didn't this work? And all management just looks up at the sky and whistles and walks away with their hands in their pockets.

They go by dollars spent in maintenance. Once a truck has had X amount of dollars spent on it, to the auction block it goes. But if they hired crack mechanics and did more maintenance intervals, the cost per year may go up a little more but they would have the truck for a LOT longer. Would save them $ in the long run. But as always, some people have to justify their jobs in material analysts and purchasing, so they come up with these stupid limits as to what justifies a truck as junk or not, so they can get money in their dept to go out and spend for new gadgets.

 

Yeah we have a monster Roots 616 or 620 blower...I forget but it'll pull 15" vacuum at 2200rpm. Some of the heavy hitters that use hydrovacs can pull up to 20-25" vacuum, which is insane. Our trucks we use a 7" plastic tube in the hole (can't use a metal one due to possible contact with live electric) and one wrong move will get your arm sucked up the tube. Had one guy dislocate his shoulder from it.

 

I got one of those names wrong .
It was gary gray out of Delaware New Jersey...not gary Wills lol.
Kephart was out of bigler penn .
Both were big into municipal waste out of nyc and jersey .

 

Well I uploaded from my computer this time instead of my phone, so lets see how this goes.


If the pics are too big let me know and I'll thumbnail them instead. This is one of our older trucks, not the oldest as evidenced by the DEF tank behind the fuel tank. M2 chassis I believe its built on, just a basic heated cabinet on the side for our gear and some of the water lines. Was going to post a pic of the back but the license plate was visible so Im passing on that, but it was easy to see the rodder pump hanging out in the elements.