 
APRIL, 2005 UPDATE NEW BANNER PICTURE A new banner image has been posted on the front page, showing trucks from the city of Youngstown, Ohio. This late 1960's fleet consists of seven Gar Wood LP-700's on Ford F-Series, bracketed by a pair of heavy-duty Diamond Reo trucks with Heil Colectomatic Mk.II's or Mk.III's. NEW ALBUM: DAYBROOK POWER PACKER A new album and article has been added this month to the Photo Albums section on the Daybrook Power Packer, and includes information on its little-known predecessor, the Herman Ram-Pak. This informative article includes photos and technical drawings which help "de-mystify" this classic American make, one of the few continuous-type rear loaders ever sold here. NEW FEATURE: DOWNLOADS A new button has been added to the navigation bar at left, and will be an occasional feature called Downloads. As a result of a request for a copy of 1968 Eagle Compressload brochure, I decided to post it online so everyone could have access. This are high quality, un-reduced 150dpi scans from which excellent printable copies may be made. This was posted in the CRT Members Area in late March, and the Eagle brochure will remain up temporarily. I will try to post more in the future as space permits. CORRECTION: MARCH TRUCK OF THE MONTH While doing unrelated research, I realized that while the caption for the Maxon "Son of Godzilla" correctly identifies that truck as part of the Scottsdale, Arizona fleet, it is probably better referred to as having "emerged" from California: the truck was patented by George B. Morrison of Inglewood in 1965 (as a front loader) and was assigned to Western Body and Hoist of Los Angeles. Morrison also designed the hoisting arm (as shown in the photo) in 1971. This patent was assigned to Maxon Industries of Huntington Park, who advertised the Barrel-Snatcher truck nationally. The relationship between Western, Maxon and Diamond Reo is not entirely clear, but I hope to have more information in the future on these ground-breaking auto-loaders. NEW WEBSITE: CRT VIDEO LIBRARY AT YAHOO GROUPS Some CRT readers have suggested providing refuse truck films at CRT. Since bandwith is in limited supply here, I have opened another CRT area on Yahoo Groups. Called the CRT Video Library, this group is currently open to the general public (unrestricted), and should be only used for uploading refuse truck videos; the Members Area at MSN groups should be used for all member photos as well as bulletin board postings. Several things are worth discussing here. First, I was reluctant to start this group at Yahoo, since it now spreads out CRT over three domains which can be confusing. However, I will attempt to cross-link all three sites in a coherent and easily navigable manner. Additionally, Yahoo offers expanded storage area for movies, compared to the basic (free) MSN package of 3MB. So you may ask, why not move the Members Area from MSN to Yahoo Groups? The simple answer is that the layout and appearance of the MSN Groups pages is far superior to Yahoo, particularly the photo albums. MSN Groups offers larger photo sizes (up to 600 pixels in width or height) for much a more enjoyable experience when viewing still images. The new group offers anyone with a Yahoo password (which many of you already have) an opportunity to post movies immediately. As of this writing, there is nothing currently posted at the CRT Video Library, but all are free to post any refuse truck videos as you wish. As mentioned, it is unrestricted for now, meaning you won't need a verified membership. This is for your convenience, and may change in the future. Invariably, spammers will post to this group, but for the time being I will just monitor and delete any unrelated messages. I hope to upload some films in the future, both from my personal collection and possibly some vintage footage as well. If all goes well, perhaps at some future date I will have the bandwidth to bring the videos feature back here to the main website. Stay tuned to CRT. CRT MEMBERS AREA at MSN GROUPS As most of you have surely noticed, the Members Area has really taken off during the month of March, with a dramatic increase in the amount of messages and loads of new photos. Registered membership is now at 22, with a great many new members hailing from the UK. American enthusiasts will appreciate the rare photos of vintage European equipment, much of it virtually unknown in the U.S. Also, the message board is great place to swap stories and information or to ask a question about unknown or "mystery" trucks; refuse truck experts and enthusiasts from around the world are at your disposal. Special thanks go out to Phil Clifford, Martin Heming, Nigel Hughes and Shaun Taylor of the UK, Andy Inserra from the US and Martin from Sweden who have all contributed a wealth of photos and information to the Members Area over the past weeks. Remember, Members Area registration is free and provides up to 3MB free photo hosting that may be used for anything related to refuse trucks. Photos of classic, modern, or model refuse trucks are all welcome. Scrap yard photos of vintage equipment are not only welcome, but highly encouraged. And speaking of scrap yards.... OPERATION SEARCH & RESTORE  CRT members Nigel Hughes and Martin Heming, both drivers for SITA UK, are currently seeking a Dennis Paxit or SD Pakamatic refuse collection vehicle for restoration. A good example is currently being sought, and they have been scouring some local salvage yards. At left, Nigel (on riding step) and Martin are pictured with another vintage truck, the Jack Allen Colectomatic, which was the UK version of the Heil Mark III/Formula 3000. A trip to Malta is planned for the end of April, that island being the home to much great British iron, with many examples still working !
Anyone who can help or would like to participate in this project should contact either Martin or Nigel, both of whom may also be reached through the message boards at the CRT Members Area and the SD Fan Group. The latter site features a lot of great pictures of SD Revopaks still working on Malta, as well as Martin's original post on this project.  
FILMS LIST A great new entry, "Child's Play 3" was submitted this month by John Millman, and has been added to the Films List. I have reviewed the refuse truck scene which features a good look at an AMREP front loader in action, inside and out, with a good look at the packer panel detail. (Sincere thanks to my friend Eileen S., who has kindly allowed access to her personal collection of 10,000 movies on video cassette, making instant review of most film submissions possible !) NEW INDUSTRY LINKS Along with a bunch of really nice pictures, I received an email from Rainer Lange of Huffermann Entsorgungssysteme GmbH, Wildeshausen, with a link to his company's website. Huffermann is a market leader in Germany for front and automated side loader systems. Back here in the States, I have also added AMREP, a small manufacturer based in southern California, which was extremely hard to find on the worldwide web for some reason. AMREP builds the unusual octagonal-bodied front loaders often seen on the west coast. RUNNING CHANGES TO THE WEBSITE I have been cross-linking the main CRT site to photo albums housed in the CRT Members area at MSN groups. These are primarily toy/replica albums that are linked to their respective manufacturer albums here at CRT. Also, the INDUSTRY LINKS and LINKS OF INTEREST will be updated throughout the month as needed, rather than only monthly as before. The last few weeks I have been repairing some problems with the HTML code to make the site more attractive when viewed using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. The navigation bar buttons in particular were a problem, appearing too far apart from each other, and some of the gallery pages were offset to the left. Most issues have (hopefully) now been resolved, and I will now be able to regularly check the site for bugs that appear when viewing with IE6. Eric Voytko, April 2, 2005 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 |