IDENTIFICATION: BUCKET LOADERS

Classification: Bucket Loaders
LOADING: INTERMITTENT

    A self loading refuse body in which a bucket or trough carries batches of refuse from street level to the top of the body, where it is inverted, emptying the contents within. Bucket or trough may be located at the side or rear of the body. Power means for the bucket may be mechanical or hydraulic, or any combination. Body may be open, enclosed, or partly enclosed. Bucket or trough may be detachable. Body may include auxiliary compaction means.

    Classification excludes: Models in which the bucket or trough is principally loaded from the front, bodies primarily designed for the rendering industry, and modern compartmented recycling bodies. Also excludes refuse bodies equipped with lifts for 55-gallon drums or household trash bins. Excludes bodies originally designed for direct hand-loading of refuse, but later adapted for emptying containers.

    Very basic type of collection unit, with many examples possibly hand-fabricated. Commercially built models have been produced in very wide variety of configurations. ATIA and Colecto were early USA manufacturers, with models dating to the late 1920s. In France, the firm Fernand Geneve built fully enclosed models with compaction plates and detachable buckets from the 1930s to 1950s. After the Second World War, rapidly fell from favor with the advent of modern compaction bodies, though still occasionally used for separate garbage collection and urban collections in some areas through the 1960s. Large-capacity bucket loaders were also produced by regional manufacturers in Southern California during the 1950s and 1960s.

Related to, and probably the inspiration for front loaders, rendering bodies and recycling bodies.