A garbage truck, called a rubbish truck in Australia, a bin lorry in the United Kingdom and a trash truck in parts of the United States, is a truck specially built to collect municipal solid waste and carry it to a treatment facility. The first self-propelled garbage trucks were ordered by London's Chiswick District Council in 1897 from Thornycroft, described at the time as steam motor tip-cars for the collection of dust and house refuse. Covered bodies replaced open-topped trucks in the 1920s to control odor and spillage, a cable-lift hopper design appeared in 1929, George Dempster introduced the wheeled-container Dumpster system in 1937, the Garwood Load Packer brought hydraulic compaction that roughly doubled truck capacity in 1938, and Scottsdale, Arizona introduced the first automated side-loading truck in 1969. Garbage trucks remain a fixture of urban infrastructure worldwide, and the shift from manual loading to automated systems has both improved collection efficiency and reduced worker injuries.
Facts
SignificanceBrought hydraulic compaction to waste collection through innovations such as the 1937 Dempster-Dumpster system and the 1938 Garwood Load Packer, roughly doubling a truck's carrying capacity. 1 Manufacturer or BuilderThornycroft Steam Wagon and Carriage Company 1 Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Garbage truck
WikipediaHistory sectionQuote, History section
In 1938, the Garwood Load Packer revolutionized the industry when including a compactor in the truck was implemented. The first compactor could double a truck's capacity.
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