Classic Refuse Trucks DEMPSTER

Dempster in the Early 1950's

This 1950 model LFW hoist riding atop a Reo truck chassis belonging to the City of Baltimore, Bureau of Sanitation, is preparing to lift a Dumpster container. Note the attractive lettering and pinstriping on the hoist, as well as on the ten yard Dumpster container. Idle containers served as a "billboard" for sanitation departments which took great pride in their modern equipment.

Dempster's Dumpster system was steadily improved in the years following the war, and was an unqualified success. He built a quality product and advertised it heavily. The system was the solution to the dire need of municipalities for sanitary refuse storage, a need not initially addressed by the "big three" rear loader manufacturers, and it spread like wildfire across the country. Their only major competitor was cross-town rival Brooks Brothers, but that firm's Load-Lugger system was better suited to industrial and construction waste and never quite matched Dempster's aggressive marketing and broad selection of containers.

Dempster continued to rack up numerous patents for his equipment, even attempting to branch out into construction vehicles with model GRD-101 Diggster, a self propelled shovel which would serve as the platform for the model GRD-304 high lift container hoist. This was essentially a specialized fork-lift truck that raised Dumpster containers high enough to discharge into a mobile transfer trailer. It was a novel idea, especially as many towns adopted the sanitary landfill method of disposal. Typically located well outside city limits, the use of sanitary fills often increased hauling distances considerably. With the new system, multiple containers could be collected by a GRD tractor, and emptied into an open-top trailer or enclosed Pak-Mor compaction trailer. It was good idea, and showed a company sensitive to the changing needs of its customers.

However, a much more efficient method of bulk collection was already emerging, being in large part developed by west coast body builder S. Vincen Bowles. In conjunction with a southern California refuse contractor, Bowles had developed and sold a fixed-bucket front loader in 1952, and shortly thereafter had modified it to service detachable containers. Bowles' loader used flat forks to couple with individual containers, which were then hoisted skyward and dumped into a large open body. These new, efficient "front loaders" were the wave of the future, especially as increasingly longer hauls were becoming common. Dempster didn't waste any time introducing their own front loader, but it was essentially a stop-gap solution that was theirs in name only.

Mobile transfer station of 1955: A GRD-304 lift truck feeds a 32 yard Pak-Mor compaction trailer, designed specially for this application. A good idea, but it was mostly eclipsed by waves of new front loader designs during the late 1950's. Dempster would team with Pak-Mor again when they fielded their first front loader.

1/7/06