Automated Collection Goes to Work

Efficiency, decreased costs in Worker’s Compensation and labor, increased recycling efforts, and more aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods on trash pickup day are the primary reasons why more solid waste managers are pleased with the results they’re getting from automated collection systems.

In the year that Bay City, TX, has automated its solid waste collection, the city has saved $200,000 in labor costs.

Bay City had used large private hauling companies for its solid waste pickup for about two decades, but city officials became unhappy with the service levels and decided to handle waste hauling in-house, says Wayne Hyde, the city’s solid waste manager.

Prior to hiring Hyde-who had 23 years of experience working with major private haulers-Bay City officials had contacted officials in the city of Victoria, TX, which led them to create a fleet of Heil automated collection vehicles.

Currently, the city runs four Rapid Rail and two CP Python vehicles with Autocar chassis and Heil bodies. Two of the six vehicles are 2009 models; the other four are 2010.

The Rapid Rails have an 8-foot reach; a 1,600-pound lift capacity; an eight-second cycle time; Operate-In-Gear-At-Idle; continuous packing with a paddle-packer design; three-piece Cordaflex loader harness; Deutsch electrical connectors; and rotary-actuated switches. It is available in sizes 16 to 32 cubic yards.

CP Pythons have a 9-foot reach. Standard units handle capacities from 30 to 96 gallons with a load capacity of 625 pounds at full reach. The lift capacity encompasses a load capacity of up to 1,250 pounds at 2 to 6 feet.

After Hyde was hired in July 2009, he set up the solid waste system for the city, which includes four daily residential automatic sideloader routes every day, two brush routes, and a frontloader route.

“So far, we’ve had great success with them,” Hyde notes.

At first, residents were apprehensive about automated waste collection, Hyde says.

“They had unlimited curbside collection off of a rearloader,” he says. “All that has changed is we have given them a 95-gallon Toter for the trash and we ask them to separate all of the brush, because we have a chipping and composting site. We pick up large items by hand,” he says.

Now residents appreciate how the new service is more efficient and clean, Hyde says. Solid waste officials such as Hyde comment on the pre-automation days when neighborhoods were littered with garbage bags, some broken up, and trash cans with no lids and exposed trash.

“Now on waste collection day, you see a nice long line of 95-gallon toters with the lids closed,” Hyde says.

He also appreciates decreased Worker’s Compensation costs.

“(With automated collection), you don’t have the exposure on the back end of a rearloader when it’s compacting, splitting things, and splintering it and putting it out in the air,” says Hyde.

There has been a savings in labor as well.

“We figure we would save almost $50,000 a year per truck,” Hyde says. “Prior to this, they ran four rearloaders through town. We saw a savings of $200,000 just in labor expense. We looked at doing it with rearloader, but realized there would be an additional $200,000 or more in additional labor costs to have two guys on the back of a truck.”

Hyde used to run Rapid Rail vehicles in another Texas town and liked the truck’s flexibility.

“Once you hit the joy stick, it’s automatic control by the truck,” says Hyde. “I like that you can have it either way. You can have it totally manual where the driver is totally in control of the arm at all times, or you have an automatic system.

“It’s nice they also have outside controls on the trucks. In the past, they’ve not had that. If you need to get out of the truck and pick something up, you don’t have to climb all the way back in the truck. You can stand up on the side of the truck and flip the toter.”

The learning curve for the vehicles is easy, Hyde notes.

“Most of the guys I’m hiring are in their 20s to 30s and they grew up with joystick games,” Hyde points out. “Living in a rural town, a lot of these people have used track hoes, backhoes, and farm equipment, and all of that is operated by joystick. Even though they might be right-handed, they pick it up quicker because they’re used to using a joystick in their left hand.”

To train the employees to use the automated trucks, Hyde took them out into an undeveloped subdivision where 30 to 40 toters were set up, and they practiced picking them up.

“By the end of the first day, they had it down,” he says.

The automated collection system has exceeded his expectations, Hyde says.

“We have about 5,600 homes here. I anticipated being out about 11 or 12 hours, averaging 100 homes an hour. The first day, they all averaged 200 plus. We started at 7 a.m. and they were done with the route about 2 p.m. and had it in the landfill. They picked it up quick,” he adds.

In Kissimmee, FL, Autocar chassis are being paired with Labrie Automizer bodies to serve 13,000 residential customers. The collection system entails two weekly garbage pickups, one weekly yardwaste pickup per week, and one bulk trash collection per week.

“The capacity varies between 27 and 31 cubic yards,” says Derrick. “This is a straight frame vehicle; the arm extends farther than the other manufacturers’; the body is tapered so the team members have a much easier time at the transfer station when unloading; and the truck operates in the idle position so we can minimize our overall fuel consumption.”

The city had started “semiautomation” about 14 years ago, says David Derrick, director of public works and engineering for Kissimmee.

“The guys would get out of the truck and grab the container with a lifter on the side of the truck, which would tip it,” says Derrick. “From there, we progressed forward into full automation where the driver sits in the cab, pulls the levers and runs the whole operation from his driver’s seat on the right-hand side.”

The switch, which took place three years, was prompted for a few reasons, but primarily for operational efficiency as well as the safety of the employees.

Kissimmee runs eight garbage routs per day, with two backup trucks and two fully automated yardwaste trucks with one backup. The city also runs two bulk collection trucks using three Petersen Lightning Loader grapple trucks on International chassis with one backup truck.

“The guy gets out of the cab and stands on a platform, but he runs all of the levers, and the claw reaches out and grabs all of the debris and picks it up and loads it in the back of the truck,” Derrick says.

Derrick favors the Autocar chassis for its reliability.

“It’s always on the route and we’ve had very little trouble with it,” he says. “All we do is maintenance. There are not a lot of issues we’ve had to deal with as far as warranty work or taking it up to the dealer in Orlando.”

He says the body of most collection vehicles is similar, so with the Labrie bodies, “it really comes down to the collection arm. We’ve had good success with it. It has fewer moving parts and doesn’t quite bang the truck as hard as others do, so the drivers enjoy them better.”

Derrick also likes that the collection arm’s longer reach enables it to pick up cans between obstructions, such as parked cars, telephone poles or mailboxes.

One of the biggest advantages of the automated collection system is the savings in Worker’s Compensation costs, says Derrick.

“We don’t have to deal with a guy getting out and injured, so the productivity has gone up having the guys in the vehicles and safely away from any kind of vehicles or any of the moving parts,” he says.

Derrick says he’s always been a proponent of automated collection.

“When I came here 15 years ago, it was one of my goals to move forward with that,” he says. “It’s really met my expectations and does everything I thought it would do. I’m quite happy with the way we run our operation. It’s really kept costs down.”

In Florida, private hauler Choice Environmental is attracting attention not only for its fleet of 11 automated EZ-Pack waste collection vehicles, but because of the added environmental benefit: The vehicles run on compressed natural gas (CNG).

Choice Environmental provides solid waste and recycling services to the residential, commercial, institutional and industrial sectors. The company has offered its clients-including the city of Fort Lauderdale, FL-automated solid waste collection for nearly a year.

Choice Environmental’s fleet of 11 automated collection vehicles are the 2010 Autocar ACX64, single right-hand drive chassis powered by CNG, coupled with the EZ-Pack high-compaction automated sideloader (ASL).

“We have had more than 10 years’ experience with EZ-Pack,” says Glen Miller, chairman and chief executive officer for Choice Environmental. “They have shown great support from the dealer network as well as factory support.”

The manufacturer delivered the vehicles in a timely fashion, even with Choice Environmental’s specifications for CNG, he notes. Managers at Choice Environmental sought to complete its routes in a faster, cleaner, and more efficient manner by going automated.

“They have surpassed our expectations,” says Miller. “The high compaction of 800 to 1,000 pounds per yard means fewer trips to the landfill and we do not have to stop the truck to compact.”

Clients receive 90-gallon plastic carts with attached wheels and lids.

“They are easy to move, there are no broken trash bags on the streets, far fewer rodent problems, and the lids don’t blow down the streets in wind,” Miller says, adding that the company’s automated collection trucks provide its drivers with a controlled environment out in the elements.

“Driver fatigue has been dramatically reduced,” he says. “Also, our Workers’ Compensation has diminished to almost zero.”

The company has realized cost savings as well. The trucks enable the company to collect at the same number of homes with one employee what used to take three employees to accomplish.

Miller is pleased also with the dual benefits of the system. Not only has the automation saved time and money, but the ability to have specified the trucks with CNG “provides quiet, clean-burning, domestically fueled trucks in the communities,” he notes.

Cost savings was the primary driving factor for the city of Seymour, IN, to introduce automation into its solid waste hauling services in September 2009, says Richard Wilde, director of public works.

“We were doing all-rearloading trash pickup with the packer, and we thought we’d go automated and did it with two Labrie trucks,” Wilde says. “We completely did away with all alley pickups and went all-out front.

“One of the biggest costs was Worker’s Compensation costs,” he says, adding that costs in the year prior to putting the vehicles into service amounted to $52,000 in claims. After the city bought the automated trucks, “that dropped to next to nothing,” Wilde notes.

Other cost savings were realized as well with fuel, tires, and wear and tear. During the first three-month period in which Seymour had the vehicles, the city saved 1,000 gallons in fuel.

The city has encountered labor savings as well. Seymour staffs each vehicle with one driver, while one employee serves as a backup. Some employees were shifted to the recycling program so that new hires were unnecessary, Wilde says.

Wilde says Seymour chose Labrie trucks because “they have the longest reach in the industry, and without that we wouldn’t be able to pick up a lot of the things we do.” The Labrie Automizer Right-Hand trucks’ automated arm can lift 600 pounds at a time and has an arm span of 12 feet, Wilde adds.

The payload capacity is larger than other trucks the city has run but doesn’t compact as much, he says.

“I bet we can get in 2 to 3 tons more on this truck than with the regular packer we were running,” he says. “It doesn’t pack it as much because it’s not a true packer, but we can basically run a load each truck a day and we’re saving trips to the transfer station.”

The Labrie automated collection vehicles have exceeded expectations, Wilde says.

The transition “went a lot smoother than we were told it was going to,” he says. “We did a lot of planning and talked with other communities that had begun automated collection. We followed their lead and things really went smoothly for us.”

Seymour officials considered other body types, but found none compared to what they liked about the Labrie vehicles.

Ironically, recycling efforts picked up after the city introduced automated trash collection. Seymour recycles plastic, glass, aluminum, paper, and cardboard.

“We do curbside recycling here and it jumped 30% the day we started doing automation,” says Wilde. While he can’t explain why, Wilde theorizes it has something to do with residents believing they would not be able to fit all of their trash into the container used for automated pickup, so they started recycling.

Wilde predicts that within the next four years, Seymour will start using automation for recycling pickups as well.

An automated collection system is successful in relation to the level of experience of employees operating it, Wilde points out.

“If you don’t have the right people in those trucks, the system won’t work well,” he says, adding that the learning curve entails employees knowing how to run their routes properly and in a time-saving fashion.

After the city acquired the trucks, employees trained for two weeks in an open area, practicing using the automation arm.

“Basically, they have to know how to sit behind that truck and run the joystick,” he says.

In Houston, TX, automated solid waste collection has been a part of life since 1995. The city began phasing-in automated recycling collection a year ago and currently has about 74,000 customers involved in that effort.

Ed Chen, the deputy director of Houston’s Department of Solid Waste Management Department who handles the south operations and municipal recycling, says there are a few drawbacks to automated collection, Chen points out.

There are more mechanical parts, thus there’s a greater need for ongoing maintenance, he says. The city runs 90 routes a day four days a week in 10-hour shifts and each crew oversees an average of 1,050 arm lifts per day.

“That puts a big burden on the arm,” says Chen.

Houston solid waste officials favor McNeilus for its sturdy truck bodies and have 120 trucks in the fleet, with 30 of them serving as backup. The vast majority of the city’s automated solid waste collection trucks are McNeilus.

“If something goes wrong with the truck, we need to be able to bring it back and send a backup truck to finish the route,” Chen notes of having the backup vehicles.

The McNeilus AutoReach Automated Side Loader reaches from side to side as well as out. The truck has 20-yard to 31-yard body sizes; Houston uses yard body sizes of 29, 30, and 31. The truck has a tandem gear pump that allows it to be operated at idle to minimize noise level and fuel consumption.

McNeilus also makes a manual/automated sideloader. The arm provides automated trashcan collection and the lower sill height enables the operator to get rid of other debris not picked up by the arm. An optional cart tipper enables collection from both sides of the street.

Chen also likes the safety aspects-especially that drivers do not have to pick up garbage by hand. Like other municipalities, Houston has had a decrease in Worker’s Compensation claims as a result of automating its solid waste collection.

Houston is now phasing-in automated single-stream curbside recycling and at this point has 74,000 homes in the program.

Chen says he believes automated solid waste collection is a trend that is picking up speed among cities throughout the country.

“Cities need to cut down on the manpower costs and reduce the Worker’s Compensation costs,” he says.

The short-term drawback is that the equipment is more expensive, Chen says. He says that long-term cost savings in labor and safety provide the return on the investment.

The life cycle for one of its automated trucks is seven years before it is replaced, Chen says.

Another city that is relatively new to automated waste collection is Anchorage, AK.

Two years ago, Anchorage was the largest United States city without curbside recycling. The city’s Solid Waste Services began some of the first automated recollection of recyclables in Alaska.

In fall 2008, the city’s Solid Waste Services instituted automated solid waste collection and curbside recycling collection, with each resident given a 96-gallon roll cart for commingled recyclables and another into which to place solid waste. The city does both refuse and recycling collection in the same time it took to execute refuse-only routes and is now collecting up to 15,000 pounds of recyclables a day,

The automation also saved residents from having to go to a recycling center to drop off recyclables and is now being provided to 3,500 households, with expected expansion to 13,000.

Anchorage also has a “pay-as-you-throw” pricing structure that encourages residents to throw away fewer items to save costs.

The city uses three Curbtender automated sideloaders mounted on Peterbilt chassis from Wayne Engineering to do the job. The arms lift 2,000-pound loads with a 7-foot reach. The Curbtenders have standard, belt, or universal gripper options, interchangeable with a pull-pin design.

The trucks are equipped with a four-camera system and bright LED lights. The right-hand camera shows operators a view of the cart as it is gripped for dumping. A hopper camera spots unacceptable recyclables. The other two cameras offer visibility while driving forward or backing up.

Anchorage officials also chose the Curbtender for the eventual move to 300-gallon carts.

City officials praise the program for bringing an efficiency rate of 30% and improving workers’ safety, especially in Alaska’s harsh winter conditions. Operators can stay in heated cabs rather than slipping on ice to pick up garbage.

While it is not yet out into the marketplace, New Way is preparing to introduce the Sidewinder ZXT and Sidewinder XTR.

The arm on the ZXT spans 6 feet and lifts up to 500 pounds, while the XTR, which also spans 6 feet, lifts up to 750 pounds. Both models are equipped with an end-of-arm gripper that is centered in-line to increase durability.

The ZXT is lighter with a maneuverable chassis and a compact hopper; the XTR offers body capacities of 20 to 31 cubic yards. Both models can be operated by a single driver.