Classic Refuse Trucks NEWS

CRT News Update, Spring 2009 (Page 2)

COLLECTORS CORNER

The CRT Collectors Corner is a newsletter within CRT which covers collectibles, models and toys related to the refuse industry. In the 14th edition, we feature a home made model by Sebastian Dickau of Germany, which is a large scale replica of a Schorling 2R refuse packer on a Bruder Toys truck chassis. This accurate replica features working hydraulics! Packer, tailgate and ejector are fully powered by small-scale hydraulic cylinders.

At press time, I don't have any more details or video of this fantastic model, but Sebastian did send in eight detailed photos. To see them, visit the latest edition of CRT Collectors Corner. Past issues of Collectors Corner are also available from the menu bar on the left of most CRT pages.

FILMS NEWS: Films List Re-designed
There's a lot to report on this edition regarding films, and I'll start be announcing that the CRT Films list has been completely overhauled and re-designed. For new readers of this site, the Films list is a page here at CRT that lists motion pictures and TV shows in which a refuse truck appears. When available, links to film clips of the truck scenes are also included. The list has grown rather long over the years, so I have now broken it down into four pages. When you click to FILMS button, you will now go to a "main page" where you will be given links to each of the four sub-pages. At each individual sub-page there is a "jump to" bar located at the top and bottom for easier navigation within the films pages.

The last of the four pages is a list of titles only (without descriptions) of those films/shows for which there are videos available, and links to those videos. There are now a lot of titles to wade through, and regular readers have probably seen most of them by now. To make it easier to find new titles, the Main Films page will have a short list of the new titles added since the last update.

And we do have new titles, starting with The Pink Panther from 1963 which features a brief shot of and old City of Los Angeles Leach Packmaster sent in by Scott Blake. There are also four new TV episodes listed this edition. From Walter Lewellen, a 1974 episode of Emergency! in which a rescue at a landfill shows a couple of old front loaders, probably Bemars. Walter also sent a 1984 Miami Vice show that has a scene featuring an old-style E-Z Pack front loader dumping a can. Your editor spotted a super rare Dodge L600 cabover with Gar Wood LP718 on a 1972 episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. , and a Rockford Files from 1976 with a scenes shot at a Los Angeles landfill. All of these new titles, and links to video clips (when available) have been added to the list.

Fortunately, many complete episodes of old TV shows are becoming available for free on the internet, which makes it a little easier to find these scenes. Some links from the films list will go directly to these complete episodes, usually at hulu.com

Walter also sent along an interesting list, compiled by the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) of films with the word "Garbage Truck" in the title or synopsis. The list contains mostly familiar titles, but there are a couple that are not on our list. This is a good use of a site search engine, and could be used with other keywords.

I also should mention another site sent to me by Zach Geroux called the Internet Movie Car Database (IMCDB), which features still images of motor vehicles taken from motion pictures. This site can be searched by movie title, but more interestingly, you can also search by vehicle make. For instance, try selecting the model "White", then from the next list click "all models" and it will bring up a group of photo icons of White trucks that appear in various films. Check out the fantastic old Bowles front loader in "Million Dollar Duck" !

It may take some digging, but there are quite a few refuse truck treasures buried in the IMCDB site, such as the Pagefield Palladin (under "Dennis") not to mention thousands of interesting cars. In addition to being a valuable reference, this is a lot of fun if you like movies, old cars & trucks or both.

16mm Films
I recently purchased a 16mm projector over the Christmas holiday with which to finally view my humble film collection which has been gathering dust. In early February, I began to post highlights from four films at the CRT Video Group at YouTube. The film titles were Clean Town USA, Community Helpers: Sanitation Workers, The Third Pollution, and Operation Responsible.

The latter title turned out to be the best of the bunch. It was produced for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1972, and is instructional film about safety for sanitation workers. It was filmed in Los Angeles, and much of the film focuses on a City refuse crew with the then-standard Heil Colectomatic Mark III. There are many more refuse trucks shown, particularly at the landfill where a very unorthodox front loader is shown. The truck in question is unusual in that rather than being equipped with lift arms, it has what appears to be a rail-type hoist mounted over the cab:

The manufacturer of this particular truck is not known, and it is most likely an independent builder from the Los Angeles area. The bracing on the truck body would

seem to indicate we are looking at a packer-type body. I believe that the rectangular box on the front of the body (just behind the top of the cab) is a hydraulic oil tank, which would be needed for a packer. As far back as the fifties, rail-type hoists of many varieties were often mounted to the rear or sides of open bodied refuse trucks (and trailers), and could be used to empty barrels, fixed troughs or standard detachable trash containers. Rear-loading versions from Advanced were built in, and common to the Los Angeles area, and this could well be one of their products or a custom installation. Another big rail loader is shown in the inset photo (left) pulling cans at the Hollywood Bowl in 1957. This big semi-trailer had two endless-loop roller chains that went around the sides of the body to transport the carriage lift. Curiously, the patent for this truck makes no mention of how it was unloaded; presumably this was done by template and dozer, or manually through the side and rear doors. By the early 1970's, light-duty rail-type hoists became popular on the earliest Automated Side Loaders, most noatbly the Rapid Rail developed by Marc Straiger.

Shortly after posting my film clips, I found yet another 16mm film already posted on You Tube, made in 1976 and titled Get Used To Me, which is a school/educational film. It is well worth viewing in that it has some excellent scenes of a 1960's Bemars front loader in action. These old straight-arm type trucks have mostly been replaced by (or converted to) over-the-cab type arms in the intervening decades. There is a good scene showing the automatic power-retracting mirrors in action. The film is posted in two segments, and each has some scenes of the truck.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES FEATURE TO RETURN
This popular feature once appeared on our old MSN Members Area, which closed in February. This was a place where members could post pictures of unidentified refuse trucks, to find the name of its manufacturer. I plan to revive this popular feature here on the main web site in the near future, hopefully in time for the next update in July

This concludes the Spring 2009 update at CRT. Thank you for your continued interest and contributions to the site.

Eric Voytko
April 5, 2009