History of the Garbage Truck or Trash trucks

By Shawn A Robertson

Garbage trucks are now an essential part of the modern civilization. One can see a number of refuse trucks running on the roads and streets in the late night or in the early morning. Trash trucks are the most important vehicles to keep our surroundings clean and healthy. Waste trucks pick up the garbage from different parts of the city or town and off load it in the garbage dumping grounds or waste management sites established for this purpose. There are a number of websites where you can collect useful information about these refuse trucks and used garbage trucks. With the increasing urbanization, generation of garbage from all the households has substantially increased. One can not imagine about clean and pollution free environment without the existence of these useful vehicles.

Basically, there are five types of garbage trucks- front loaders, rear loaders, grapple truck, pneumatic collection and side loaders. These are used at different places according to the various types of job requirements. Initially, wagons and animals were used to carry away waste but with the passage of time and some technological advancement in the field of automotives, trucks with open tops were introduced in the year 1920. The trucks with their open type left a stinking air with their movement and the garbage was also seen to spill over. To overcome this problem, trucks with covered tops were made and used for this purpose. To begin with, these trucks were used first time in the densely populated countries of Europe and North America and subsequently in the rest part of the world.

It was felt that it is quite a difficult task for the garbage collectors to lift the waste to the shoulder height and then put it into the truck. To solve this problem, hopper model in the year 1929 was introduced which was based on the cable system to lift the garbage from the ground. In 1937, George Dempster came forward with a model in which waste containers with wheels were made to tip into the waste carrying vehicles. This model was known as dumpster. In the year 1938, with the introduction of the Garwood load packer, there was a revolutionary change in the field of garbage disposal vehicles. These load packers had the novel concept of compactors being attached to a garbage truck. With the use of a hydraulic press, the capacity of a waste truck was almost doubled.

In the year 1955, the first front loader dumpster was launched in the market but these front loading vehicles were not more commonly seen till the year 1970. During the middle part of the 1970s, Peterson industries manufactured first ever grapple truck for disposal of garbage in municipal areas. In the year 1997, Lee Rathbun came forward with the rear steer system in a refuse truck. This system enabled the driver to drive and operate the loader simultaneously with the help of an elevated, rear facing cab. This increased the speed of garbage disposal in a considerable manner.

Shawn A. Robertson is a expert author on refuse trucks, garbage trucks and trash trucks. He has written a number of articles like buying garbage trucks and used refuse trucks, and waste trucks.