Early Gar Wood/Kurtz-Type Conveyor Garfield Arthur Wood was an inventor and industrialist who built his fortune (and the company bearing his name) on the hydraulic hoist. Having outgrown the original Minneapolis plant, he built a new factory and headquarters at Detroit. His hoists became common on dump trucks of the 1920's, many variations of which were used for refuse collection. By the early 1930's, Wood Hydraulics were appearing on other makes of mechanical refuse collection bodies not only for tipping, but for loading and compacting trash. Wood also offered numerous variations of open and enclosed, non-compacting rubbish bodies and would custom build a body to the customer's specifications. Gar Wood's first mechanized refuse truck was the Kurtz conveyor (or escalator) type loader. These were not Gar Wood engineered, but contract built from an in-house design by the New York City Department of Sanitation. The design is a simple mechanical loader using chain driven conveyor flights to carry refuse up the tailgate and along to top of the body where it would then fall in a pile on the floor below. Gar Wood, along with Heil and Highway Trailer Co. built many of these bodies for New York between 1937-1940, and possibly even later. Unloading was accomplished by raising the tailgate and tilting the body hydraulically, a method used by most refuse truck builders up until the 1960's. 8/1/04 (revised 10/1/04) © 2004 Eric Voytko All rights reserved Photos from factory brochures/advertisements except as noted Logos shown are the trademarks of respective manufacturers