  A fleet of DME MacLift 2-axle skip-loaders on Dodge Hi-Line chassis used by Biffa Waste Services, 1976 CRT News Update, Fall 2008 CRT SALUTES DAVID MacKRILL Tim Byrne from Birmingham, England has informed CRT of the death of a major player in the refuse industry, whose products have been featured in these pages in recent issues. Mr. David MacKrill, founder of David MacKrill Engineering (DME) which built refuse equipment used by some of England's biggest hauling concerns, passed away suddenly in late June. MacKrill began as an apprentice at world-famous Rolls-Royce at the age of sixteen, and later worked for Sheppard Equipment, who manufactured skip loader and hooklift bodies. He formed DME in 1975, and had much success selling the German-designed Haller rear loaders in the UK, as well as their own skip loader, the popular "MacLift" series. His experience at Sheppard, who were building their skip-loader under license from the German firm Meiller, may have opened the door to DME's collaboration with Haller. MacKrill's firm once employed as many as 100 workers, and their customer list reads like a "Who's Who" of the British waste industry: Biffa, A & J Bull, Bywaters, Cawley, Cleanaway, Cleansing Service Group, Clugston, Drinkwater-Sabey, Graveson, Grundon, Hales, Hemmings, E.H Lee, Leigh Environmental, PGR, Shanks-McEwan and and Skipaway were all users of DME products. Quite an amazing accomplishment for a mid-size body builder. Though retired since 1993, his MacLift skiploaders are still commonly used. Additionally, he worked as a Magistrate for twenty years and once held the presidency of the Institute of Waste Management. Both he and his company hold numerous patents related to the refuse industry. Mr. Mackrill is survived by his wife, Jo, and daughter Helen. Two new albums for David MacKrill as well as Sheppard Fabrication have been added to CRT with this edition, which features many new pictures from Tim Byrne, as well as others which had been posted in previous editions of the CRT News Update. AMERICAN LaFRANCE In the last issue, we featured a photo of an early Wayne Curbtender sent in by Dana Gregory, a refuse body which was a pioneer of mass-produced automated side loaders (ASL). Mark McKeon contacted CRT recently with some background on the truck cab and chassis which is of interest. Mark writes:  "It is from American LaFrance, the firm known for making fire engines. Back in 1982, AF was celebrating their 150th year, and they had a huge celebration at the revamped manufacturing plant in Elmira, New York. Of course it was principally attended by the fire service. However, when we went on the factory tour I was surprised to see them making the cab & chassis like the one in the photo! Note the center of the front grill sports the American LaFrance 'eagle' logo. It was great weekend. Alas, by 1985 they were gone, kaput!"
After multiple changes in ownership and bankruptcy, the firm has managed to survive and continues to build fire fighting equipment, including a special refuse truck chassis. Many of you will be familiar with this truck, the Condor, which has been around for a number of years wearing Sterling and Freightliner badges. Of historical note, American LaFrance also marketed a rotary-drum type refuse collector in the 1930s, somewhat similar in concept to the German KUKA: 
How successful this design was, or how long it was produced is unknown. By 1941, a very similar design was being offered by Keystone Equipment Corporation of Philadelphia, and may be related to the ALF. Both the ALF and Keystone were were preceded in 1930-31 by the Von Keller refuse collector. However, none of the three were advertised much (if at all) after World War II, and the rotary never made much of splash in the U.S. market. 
Above: circa 1941 Keystone. At right, 1931 Von Keller Refuse Collector ODDS & ENDS This photo of a wrecked Ford Cargo refuse truck, somewhere in Australia, was posted at the CRT Message Board by member Da_Real_Stevo_1, 
and the front load body is as yet unidentified.
There have been a few educated guesses, but even our Australian members have not been unable to positively identify this mystery front loader. The body bracing on this one bears more than a passing resemblance to those of micro-builder S.Vincen Bowles of California (currently still produced and sold under the moniker Compaction Control Industries. Could this be an obscure license-built Australian Bowles? Or maybe an unknown micro builder? Meanwhile, back in California Bill Tetreault cleared up a longstanding mystery, or perhaps a misidentification would be more precise. Bill has seen and photographed many examples of this type of front loader (shown below) in use by firms including EDS, Park Disposal and Signal Hill. 
The general consensus was that these were Maxon square-bodied front loaders with bustle tailgates. Bill has recently identified them as being built by a company called CWS Industries of El Monte, California, and he has the film to verify this: a nine minute video of one of these CWS trucks in use by Signal Hill Disposal. 
Near the end of the video, Bill added a close-up picture that he had taken of the body identification plate. A quick Google search of CWS actually revealed some more information, which was posted at....our own CRT Bulletin board! It seems that CRT member westernwaste had mentioned in a June, 2008 message that this micro-builder was building copies of the Maxon square-body. For those who miss the Maxons, he also mentioned that another firm, F&F Gomez is building the Maxon octo-bodies in Los Angeles. They even have a stainless steel version!
Maxon ceased production of their refuse bodies in 2001 or thereabout. Therefore, it stands to reason that a good many of the "Maxons" seen in Southern Cal today may actually one of these knock-offs. These two have of course been added to the Database. And if your keeping score, we have also heard of a Maxon copy built in Alaska by Bobs Services, and a what could be described a hybrid of the Maxon octo hopper and AMREP Hardox body which is produced by Universal Waste Systems of Los Angeles. For the first time in over a year, we are featuring some new models from Quebec's Pierre Colette in the current edition of Collectors Corner. These are hand built replicas of real refuse packer bodies, which are mounted on 1/25 scale plastic model trucks. He also sent along pics of one of the new First Gear Heil ASLs with an interesting modification! We also have video of new Heil Rapid Rail recycler from Tonka, and as usual, Ebay auction highlights since our last issue. REFUSE TRUCKS ON FILM Regular contributor Travis Giles adds several more gems to the CRT Films Page, accompanied by video clips, including Striking Distance and two episodes of the new tow-truck reality series Wrecked. Best of all is on "The Works-Garbage", a three part ride-along with the DSNY (Department of Sanitation, New York City) operators of the worlds largest sanitation fleet. There are Heil 5000's and 4060 split-body RL's, and even one on the new Chagnon rear loaders featured. Chris Richards also supplied a new title which features DSNY iron of an earlier era, in the 1974 film Claudine starring James Earl Jones. Chris has firsthand knowledge of the GMC/Heil Colectomatic Mark III trucks seen in the film, as well as other trucks of the day: 
"I grew up watching these trucks on their collection routes. The engine is a gasoline V6. An air-shift PTO engaged the hydraulics. The driver moved a lever which locked the brakes, and the PTO would engage when the transmission was shifted to neutral. There was also a Colectomatic/IH Fleetstar version, which was more popular. The last time I saw these beautiful trucks was in the early 1980s when the department started to dieselize." "The last gasoline powered truck the department had was a IH 2500 gas V8/Load Master 300, or the "J" truck. The "K" was the diesel version with the DT-466 engine. For the record, the "L" was a tandem version." "There was one gas truck that I remember very well at the garage: 25G-240; a IH Fleetstar/Load Master 300. The body was painted green, the wheels were black, while the cab was white. She was mostly used for basket collection on Sundays. She was a tiny truck compared to the huge Mack/Load Master LM400 "N" trucks that were in use at the time. They were legendary for being able to slog through the mud at the landfill and rescuing stuck sideloaders." Thanks for the title Chris, we'll keep an eye out for that one. As always, these new titles are noted with an icon for easy reference, and higher quality versions may be found for some titles on MegaUpload by accessing the Titles Only Page. EARLY "BARN DOOR" GAR WOOD LOAD-PACKER It was four years ago this month that I completely revised the Gar Wood Album here at CRT to reflect the major influence That Garfield Wood, and the company bearing his name have had on the refuse body industry. His invention of a practical hydraulic hoist in 1911 set the stage for the modern compressing refuse trucks that would follow in the next decades. By the 1930's, Wood Hydraulic (later renamed Gar Wood Industries) was a major industrial power in the United States, and chief among their output was truck bodies. Detroit based Gar Wood was a major supplier of bodies to the American truck manufacturing industry. In 1937, Gar Wood built a refuse body designed by a mechanic working for the City of New York, Department of Sanitation (DSNY). This escalator loader would become the departments first mechanical loader in widespread use, but it was not a Gar Wood design. Gar Wood did have a radical new refuse body in the works, however. The Load-Packer, was a batch-loading refuse packer which used a hydraulic powered sweep panel to load and compress refuse into an enclosed body. It was America's first mass-produced refuse packer, and went on to become a top seller, virtually dominating the fledgeling market of the 1940's. Until recently, I had been unable to find any pictures of the back end of the early Load-Packers. Thanks to a recently acquired brochure from 1938, we can now get a good look at the tailgate ram mechanism, and there is a surprise; barn doors were used originally in place of the top-hinged, one piece door that was used on the majority of the pre-1951 models (so-called "Slam Door" Gar Woods). 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: 
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 (1), 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! 
At left is a City of Detroit Load Packer Type A from a September, 1939 advertisement. The top-hinged door is the obvious difference, and as mentioned this would become a standard feature through 1951 when the LP-200 series was introduced.
However, also note the heavy reinforcement made to the packer ram, particularly the bell-crank arms that connect the hydraulic cylinders to the panel which are massive compared to the early barn-door models shown previously. As with any new design, Gar Wood probably corrected many weaknesses found only after a number of units had been in actual, day-to-day service. Footnote #1: Article: "Refuse Collection in Montreal, Canada" (American City Magazine, 1941) Continued... 
© 2008 Eric Voytko All Rights Reserved Logos shown are the trademarks of respective manufacturers Photos from factory brochures/trade advertisements except as noted |