Those buttons are controls for the boom or hydraulic arm that snatches the garbage cans.
The joystick consists of a “deadman” switch that disables all joystick controls and activates the arm when your hand grips the joystick.
When activated; tilting the joystick left or right will extend or retract the boom. Tilting the joystick up or down lifts or drops the boom.
The top 2 buttons are inert on my model of truck but on some garbage trucks with dual hoppers (1 for trash and 1 for recycling) it controls a divider panel so the driver can dump the can in the appropriate side of the hopper.
The bottom 2 buttons open or close the gripper fingers of the boom when grabbing trash cans.
It's amazing how it used to be a 3 man crew when I was a kid. There would be a driver and then two guys hanging off the back collecting cans from both of the street.
In my area it's a 4-5 man crew. One driving, two chucking the trash in the back and 1 or 2 guys running a street ahead to pull all the bins out onto the road to make it quicker for the other guys so they don't have to wrangle them over all the parked cars as well as lift them into the hopper
We have Republic services in my area and I’ve already had to get three replacement trash cans this year because the drivers keep dropping them from like 10-15 feet up after dumping them instead of just putting it down on the curb.
It’s like that where I am on the MD/DC border in Silver Spring, MD. My community is 150ish townhouses with cars parked between the yards/sidewalks and the road, so it would take hours with 1 or 3 person crews. I’ve never actually seen our trash folks, but recycling is always at least 5 people. No clue why I’ve been recycling multiple times and never seen trash, despite trash being twice a week and recycling being once. Our recycling is split paper and everything else, so maybe that makes a difference on how many people they need as well. Theoretically you’re supposed to have two bins and separate it yourself, but no one seems to know that so it seems like we’re the only ones who do it and that’s only cause we asked them right after we moved in when we noticed they were separating and throwing it in different sides of the truck.
Just narrow inner city streets that are filled with cars bumper to bumper on either side. The truck blocks a huge part of the road so the quicker it passes through the better. Having two guys lift hundreds of super heavy full bins both over/around the cars and then move the back off the road is much slower than having a small team be ahead of them and put any bins that are hard to reach in a more convenient place. Cuts down on missed pick ups too as they hunt for the see bins. But no it's the mafia that's rorting the system for the sake of one garbage man's salary.
I've lived places like this. It's actually as close as you get to the idea of a "force multiplier" in garbage, recycle or yard waste collection when you see these guys run an operation like this. Picture it like this:
Your side of the street has like 20 houses, townhomes, whatever, but this is often more an urban area thing. Narrower streets. So you'll see 1-2 guys come round the corner and start yanking stuff out like advance scouts. They move at a brisk pace, you actually gotta be pretty fit it looks like or you're going to end up being that. Plus you're hauling and lifting 20-50 pound stuff all day so extra fitness there.
Maybe 1-2 minutes behind them will be the truck with 1-2 guys in back and a driver. By those guys not having to do the moving, and just grabbing what's there--they go a bit faster. Say it's the difference between 30 seconds and 40 seconds at a site/house.
Not much, right? But when you scale it out area-wide and all day they absolutely save money/time by throwing the extra labor out.
I know it's counter intuitive but it works. I actually watched (don't even ask why) a video on this once by some midwest department that did this explaining it, probably because people asked. They're basically giving garbage the Henry Ford treatment.
This makes sense. I forgot I live in a “Wisteria Lane” neighborhood that looks like a Hollywood TV set and restricts street parking. On garbage day all bins are alinged to the curb and the robo gripper arm doesn’t even break a sweat. A one-man garbage truck does it all.
We have private collection. There's about a dozen haulers, not a single one does manual collection anymore. It started about 15 years ago with waste management. It's all single man operations trucks with arms. For whatever reason the unions didn't fight them on it. I would guess because the job sucked for the two guys outside in our very cold winters.
Northeast US here and our trucks are a mix of the newer ones with arms and guys for now. I think they keep a guy on the back anyhow in case the cans are facing the wrong way or not accessible from the arm right away.
Yeah, in my city it depends on the neighborhood. Older parts of town where alleys are common they have to have a guy to pull the cans up to the back where a little hook thing flips the cans into the back. Other parts of the city where people can easily put their cans onto the curb they have the trucks with the gripper arm on the side.
Yeah, we have a guy on the back still here in the SE US too. He handles the bulk trash outside of the can and makes sure the bins are pointed the right way.
Australian here. It's really weird for me to hear how many places still don't have robotic arm trucks. I've never seen anything but since at least the mid 90s.
My 6yo son has loved garbage trucks since he was 2 and there are loads of videos on YouTube to appease him, when we first started watching I was blown away by all the variations and how many were old school ones. Garbage trucks are truly more than mildly interesting
at my place they are down to two guys, because somehow the driver was having time, so can get out and empty the bin, while the other guy puts them back. It once was a job for six guys
There are some trucks with the arm in Germany as well. I was watching a report about it, I think it's mostly in rural areas where the truck has to drive a long way between villages and it doesn't make sense to have three guys at once.
Most German garbage trucks only have a hydraulic lever thing at the back and indeed mostly use a 3 man crew with two people in the back to faster move trash cans to and from the truck.
I suspect they would save money by using one-man garbage trucks that don’t have a gang of men hanging off the sides. Even one extra employee hanging off the truck is crazy expensive when you look at all the business costs.
I got do this once through a labor pool about 15 years ago. They don't tell you what your job is going to be so you just wait around until they call your name and assign you a job for the day. I was riding around on the back of a garbage truck in a dress shit and khakis on "appliance day" lol it was actually really fun!
I'm in the burbs, but the big city next door does organized hauling and the residents can put just about anything out and it gets collected without additional fees. Mattresses, electronics, appliances, etc. I'm envious because they pay a lot less for collection too.
Nah, this truck is for residential collection. You don't have a camera and joystick for a fork truck, just a button to raise and lower the forks. These are common in a lot of places where garbage trucks have to go further between collections and having multiple workers just chilling in the cab isn't economical.
For what it's worth, these sort of trucks are basically ubiquitous in MN, I've never seen a truck with riders on it. But I imagine the reason is still the same: Cheaper in the long run than paying extra workers.
I'm pretty sure he's talking about residential. I haven't seen a trash crew for at least 10 years, they've all been trucks like these where the truck has an arm that comes out, grabs the trashcan, and dumps it into the top of the truck. All controlled from the inside of the truck.
You're correct, I was mistaken. I've been informed these are used in areas where the distance between pickups is further than something like the suburbs.
How do you figure that when you make this comment 1 minute after I already edited mine, and 5 minutes after my first reply expressing that I must have been mistaken.
Still how it's done in my city. We have alleys so it'd be impossible to use a grabber arm thing. Also they will pick up stuff like mattresses and other large items.
Also, the city runs garbage and recycling but the collection in contracted out to a 3rd party. So they can run it however they please. Apparently it's just cheaper to pay 3 guys (driver + 2 bin men) than to have fancy grabber-arm trucks.
I remember watching a documentary about these two garbagemen. Just saving up for a surf shop while working. They found a dead body once, which ultimately led to them uncovering a toxic waste dumping scheme. The dead guy was a politician. But regardless, if they had trucks like this back then, they may never have figured it out since the arm would have just thrown the barrel with the guy in it, into the back of the truck. Good stuff.
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u/MrGunnermanhaz Aug 26 '21
What do the 4 buttons on top of the joystick do?
And how comes there are dual controls e.g. Steering wheel?