Silentpack The Silent Hoist Winch & Crane Company Brooklyn, New York Silent Hoist & Crane began building container handling equipment and forklifts for New York's thriving ports in 1918. By late 1937, the Brooklyn firm produced at least one example of the Silentpack refuse body shown here. It utilized an "impeller", moving within the circular body shell to compress refuse loaded through openings near the front. The impeller also ejected the load at the disposal point. At a distance, this body could easily be mistaken for a later model Pak-Mor or Seal-Press unit. The accompanying text to to these photos is somewhat vague in describing how the packer worked: "The impeller, which is operated by a power take-off from the truck engine, is capable of rotating within and moving lengthwise in the tank, and at the same time is firmly supported to take large thrusts." Looking at the photos above and below, there is visible an array of pulleys and/or rollers along the top of the drum, and twin rounded sheet metal covers running the length of either side of the lower body. It is possible that the impeller was 'threaded' to these rollers to form a sort of screw drive to move it forward or backward, depending on the direction of the PTO drive. Above, we see one of the side loading openings, with clamshell doors and a better look at some of the rollers, chains and sprockets. Also note the marking to the right of the opening which reads "274-", which may be the prefix to a fleet marking by the New York Sanitation Department (DSNY). The department was at the vanguard of experiments with new types of refuse equipment during this period, and it would be no surprise if they had operated this unit. The twelve cubic yard body was claimed to be capable of digesting 30 yards of material, indicating a healthy 2.5:1 compression ratio. Here, a the contents of an open dump truck are being fed into Silentpack , which is said to have compressed it within a third of its body. Another test, where the contents of this enclosed dump body were compacted into half of the Silentpack body. This rear view shows the heavy reinforcement bracing of the tailgate, necessary to prevent distortion from the forces imparted upon it during the packing cycle. The truck body weighed in at 8,000 pounds empty. Silent Hoist's foray into the refuse body business appears to have been a brief one. No subsequent examples or advertising for Silentpack have been found. They did not appear to have applied for a patent either, although the refuse body may have been designed outside of the company. Since that time, Silent Hoist continued building industrial material handling equipment and other products. In 1994, Illinois-based Hoist Liftruck acquired the rights to build the Silent Hoist cushion-tire forklifts 4/3/11 © 2011 Eric Voytko All Rights Reserved Logos shown are the trademarks of respective manufacturers Photos from factory brochures/trade advertisements except as noted