Classic Refuse Trucks GAR WOOD

The Load-Packer (1937)

The Load-Packer was created by George B. Wood, who is believed to be the brother of company founder Garfield Wood.⁽¹⁾ Wood filed the patent in August of 1938. This was America's first mass-production, hydraulic rear-load refuse packer, and it is impossible to overstate its impact on modern refuse body design. It remained virtually without peer until after the second World War. The Load-Packer used a single swinging packer panel, in concert with an internal load-retaining panel, powered by twin double-acting hydraulic cylinders. Access to the loading hopper was through a door or doors in the packer panel itself.

Jacob Ochsner of Austria, as well as the brilliant French inventor Ferrnand Rey had been building hydraulic rear loaders since the the early 1930's, so the Load-Packer can not claim to be the worlds first. Indeed, the Load-Packer may be arguably considered a simplification of Ochsner's sliding drawer/swinging ram method. However, the Load-Packer would break open the North American market for hydraulic rear load packers, rendering all other designs obsolete. Following the war, three major competitors (Sicard, Leach and Heil) would introduce rivals to the Load-Packer, while bucket loader and conveyor models would gradually fade away in their shadow. Only the side load packers made by Marion and Pak-Mor would be left to challenge the hydraulic rear loaders supremacy.

This early drawing from Wood's 1938 patent shows a variation of the Load-Packer with a hydraulic power actuated loading door, though there is no evidence that it was ever used in production. The patent also describes a version with side loading doors on either side of an enlarged hopper, but this too probably never left the drawing board.

A pair of side-hinged barn doors were used on the very first models. The twin barn doors are not described in the original patent, and were evidently only used on the earliest models. Below is a photo sequence of the early Load-packer in operation:

Note also the hopper shape, which is almost wedge-like when viewed in profile. This is the easy way to differentiate the early versions, or "Type A" models. The Type B models, which are believed to have been produced since sometime in 1941, have a somewhat deeper tailgate due to added support for the ram pivot shaft bearings. Type A Load-Packers were made with both barn doors and top-hinged single doors, while Type B and later Load-packers used only the latter style.

While Gar Wood's home city of Detroit, Michigan, was an early user of the Load-Packer, they were not the first. That distinction goes to a Canadian city; according to a 1941 article published in American City Magazine ⁽²⁾, Montreal, Quebec, was the first city in North America to use the Load-Packer. Montreal bought a fleet of fourteen trucks equipped with ten cubic yard bodies in 1937 as shown below:

Additionally, the city purchased four "trailer type trucks" with eighteen yard bodies which may also have been Load-Packers, but no photos of those are available. These new trucks replaced a fleet of five open body trucks and thirty-five horse drawn vehicles. Consider the amazing leap in technology; horse carts to Load-Packers in one purchase! The the new ten yard bodies were also big for their day, a time when the majority of mechanical refuse trucks were usually in the neighborhood of six yards capacity. Montreal was also able to cut crew sizes in half with the new packers, from four men to two.

These Montreal trucks are the only squared-front Load-Packers I have come across; virtually every other Gar Wood image that I have found depicts trucks with rounded front sections. It is not until the introduction of the LP-500 series in 1957 that we see a trend toward the boxier bodies. Considering that the enclosed packer truck was in its infancy in 1937, it is possible that the squared-front bodies were the first built, but were subsequently rounded off the prevent the tightly packed load from "sticking" when the body is hoisted at the dump site. Lending credence to this theory is the presence of a small, screened "window" at the upper front area of the squared, Montreal body. These likely served to alert the operator that the truck was full, but could also have been designed as vents to prevent "air locking" of the load in the otherwise sealed body.

Shown above is the first Load-Packer sold in the United States. It was purchased by the town of Tonawanda, just north of Buffalo, New York, in 1937 or 1938. I wrote to the city public works department many years ago to see if they had any more pictures or information about the truck, but never received a reply. The coach work of the truck looks ancient compared to the modern packer mounted on it!

Footnotes:
(1) Among many siblings, Garfield Wood is definitely known to have had a brother named George, who frequently co-piloted the famous Miss America racing boats. Whether this is the same George B. Wood who invented the Load-Packer can not be confirmed, but it is highly likely.

(2) Article: "Refuse Collection in Montreal, Canada" (American City Magazine, 1941)

8/1/04 (revised 1/24/09)