 
MARCH, 2006 UPDATE There is a new look this month to the homepage of CRT, with the Truck of the Month moved up under the title bar, replacing the old "fleet" banner. This month's truck, a nice looking Colectomatic is the first Heil packer to grace the front page. This truck, as well as past selections and previous News Updates will still be available at the CRT Archives. A new manufacturer has been added to the Photo Albums this month, a small Texas company known as Hydepak, and later as Hobbs Hyd-Pak. This was one of the four major side-loaders to emerge from the state of Texas (along with Pak-Mor, Seal Press and Grace), and actually built some fairly advanced equipment during the 1960's. Click on this link to see the Hydepak article, which may also be accessed from the Photo Albums button on the navigation bar. As reported last month, the CRT Video Library has now been officially deleted from Yahoo Groups. Despite a large membership, there were too few contributors (myself included) and it had become too much extra work to manage. I still like the concept and sincerely hope to bring it back in some form in the near future. Thanks to all of you who had joined and contributed to the site. The deletion of the Video Library will not affect any memberships at the MSN Members Area. Issue 13 of the Enthusiasts Club Newsletter is now online at Brian Carpenter's always excellect SD site, which features an article on moving floor refuse trucks, and a feature on Tim Byrne (for more about Tim, see below in Collectors Corner) And a sincere thank you to those who purchased vintage refuse truck ads during the Ebay auctions last month. I still plan to auction a few pieces of vintage literature (as well as some more ads), but will probably not be ready to do so until some time in April. I will definitely post an announcement on the Auction Schedule page and at the Members Area when I have a date finalized. CRT COLLECTORS CORNER: Those of you who frequent the Members Area are probably familiar with the work of Tim Byrne, who steadily supplies pictures by the hundreds of refuse trucks from around the world. Tim may actually be the hardest working dustman in the world, regularly documenting different equipment in use wherever his travels take him. This month, I'm happy to feature Tim with some of his smaller refuse collection vehicles by way of the Collectors Corner, including some of the Alan Smith models discussed recently on the CRT message board. We also have a new home-built model, the creation Sebastian Dickau of Germany, who has crafted a Leach 2R Packmaster replica. I love the hopper detail on this truck, which features a realistuc "worn-in" look. Sebastian has also posted more pictures of this truck at the CRT Members Area, the interactive side of the CRT web site. And finally, Jeff Alterman sends in a picture with a neat new idea for an old Tonka truck. All may seen at the Collectors Corner this month. REFUSE TRUCKS ON FILM Lately becoming a very popular feature here at CRT, this month there are lots of new pictures and a few new titles/updates added to the CRT Films page. Bruce Polit adds the action film Commando with an excellent picture, as well as a nice image an early Heil 5000 from Creepshow. Ray DeNicolo submitted a new title, Alices' Restaurant which features some scenes of the long-extinct Roto-Pac. My sister Valerie Smolar, arriving by plane from Chicago, hand-delivered video of two more classic trucks and one new title. Valerie spotted a 1941 film called Ball of Fire, which may have the earliest glimpse of a mechanical refuse truck (a Leach Refuse Getter) ever captured in a major motion picture. She also brought a tape of the 1967 Batman episode with features a brief appearance by a Bowles front loader. Finally, yours truly has added an image of the front loader from Terminator, which appears to be a Leach 2F with the parallelogram self-leveling linkage, and also a picture of the Colectomatic from Black Belt Jones. Many thanks to all for your submissions and images for the Films list ! Eric Voytko, March 5, 2006 Click here to return to the CRT Archives All Rights Reserved Logos shown are the trademarks of respective manufacturers Photos from factory brochures/trade advertisements except as noted |