Commercial collection operations can be your bread and butter as well as your toughest challenge.

By Lynn Merrill

Unlike residential collection, in which you can send the truck on the same route every week and expect the same number of stops and tonnage, commercial collection can be a daily mixed assortment of service frequency, bin sizes, and collection challenges. From a 1.5-yard bin at a fourplex being serviced in a driveway by a rear-loader with a lift, to a 6-yard front-load bin in an enclosure next to a restaurant, to an apartment complex’s 450-gallon automated carts serviced in an alley, meeting your customer’s commercial collection challenges can cause cranial contortions.

Commercial collections can be defined in two ways: by the type of account serviced or by the type of truck and container used.

ention commercial collection in a group of solid waste managers, and some of them will define commercial collection as commercial stores, office complexes, strip malls, or factories. Apartment complexes, mobile home parks and other places where people live fit under residential collection. For others, if it’s serviced by a front-loader or rear-loader it’s defined as a commercial account, especially if they operate a cart system for their residential collections.

The Standard
Front-loader systems include the definitive equipment when it comes to commercial work, and most of the major body manufacturers include front-loaders in their product lineups. In selecting a front-load truck, several key elements should be considered. First is the capacity of the collection truck itself. Body sizes range from 32 cubic yards to 44 cubic yards. In selecting the size of body, the trade-off will be between the body capacity and the corresponding length of the truck. In most cases, it’s desirable to increase the payload as much as practicable, but you need to take into consideration the physical restrictions of the collection route. If a truck is too large, it may not fit everywhere it’s needed.

When talking about the capacity of the truck, it is important to understand that the total capacity of the truck is composed of both the body and the hopper. Most of the manufactures have moved to increase the capacity of the hoppers up to 12 cubic yards in order to accommodate 6- and 8-cubic yard bins. This additional hopper capacity allows much more flexibility in terms of handling larger bins, thus increasing route efficiency by reducing the number of services needed. For example, if a customer is receiving 4-yard service twice per week, a switch to an 8-yard bin once per week reduces one service stop on the route.

The second element should be the capability of the arm system. Most of the arms on today’s front loaders have a capacity of 8,000 lbs—more than adequate for the typical front load bins up to 6 cubic yards. But in some municipal operations, the movement to 8- and even 10-cubic yard bins can result in additional stresses on the arms. In these cases, it may be appropriate to specify 10,000-lb capacity. Also, the design of the arm and the hydraulic system is critical, too, especially when using higher-capacity bins. Arm systems should be reinforced so that stress cracks and curvatures are reduced.

In recent years, most of the manufacturers have placed greater emphasis on the use of higher-strength steels and reinforcements for body designs, packer blades, and arms in order to reduce premature failures. The challenge has been to improve overall payload while reducing the weight and improving the reliability of the vehicle. Focus has also been placed on stronger, more reliable cylinders and filtration systems that reduce contaminants in the hydraulic oil in order to reduce cylinder wear.

Maintainability issues are also high on the list of key improvements. Manufacturers are emphasizing the use of steel hydraulic lines in lieu of hoses and are routing these lines so that they’re protected from damage. Standardized components that allow off-the-shelf repairs are also critical factors for ensuring greater reliability and maintainability of the front load fleet. The effects of these improvements are being demonstrated today in various cities.

Casper, WY
The city of Casper is a city of about 50,000 people near the center of Wyoming. The city has the exclusive residential collection rights within the city limits, and there is open competition for the commercial services. The city and one private hauler provide commercial service with a front-load collection system. There are also two private haulers providing commercial collection with a rear-load collection system.

 The city operates two front-load collection routes, five days a week. “Currently we have three front-loaders that we own and maintain in our fleet,” states Robert Orpet, supervisor in charge of refuse collection and recycling. “We have the city divided in half and we have an east side route and a west side route. The third front-load has always been designated as the backup. In the last two years we have implemented a cardboard recyclable route for our commercial customers, so that backup front-loader is now used for the cardboard route three days a week.”

The city has a seven-year replacement schedule for the front-load trucks. In previous years the city used 37-cubic-yard Leach Milleniums. The chassis varied because of the municipal low-bid process between Volvo LL64 and Mack LEs. The city recently switched to Labrie Front Loaders, according to Orpet. “Leach sold out their front-loader line to a French company that said it would no longer be offering the Leach front-load body in the United States unless you wanted to pay the big bucks to have it shipped back over here. We’ve got a local dealer here that sells the Labrie truck line, so we changed to Labrie about three years ago. Our two front-line trucks are Labrie 37-cubic-yard Optimizers.”

The city prefers to standardize on the truck fleet when possible. “Mainly it’s to keep continuity and it’s easy on maintenance if you have one truck body, it’s so much easier to work on. Labrie has been working well for us. We haven’t had any surprises or major difficulties outside of getting parts out of Canada. If you need a part, sometimes it will get hung even if you do next-day air, there’s no such thing out of Canada. It seems to get caught up in customs for a couple of days before we actually get it down here.”

One of the major changes that the city is undertaking is that of converting some of its smaller 2-cubic-yard bins that are in gravel alleys providing service to apartment buildings to 450-gallon side-load containers. “It was the old way of thinking back in the ’80s, when they brought in the commercial front-load system and they had the automated residential system that if it was commercial it needed a steel bin; if it was residential, you went with the plastic carts,” states Orpet. “We’ve gotten into the thinking that we have to find the best method to serve the customer and provide the service safely and efficiently. Trying to roll a 2-yard steel bin in a gravel alley is rough because you’ve got to turn it to get it into the alley just right so you can pick it up with the truck. The city was using 300-gallon bins in the alleys and [for] some small businesses along the alleys that cannot be serviced with a front-load commercial bin, and servicing them with our residential Wayne Curbtenders. Now that they’ve come out with 450-gallon plastic side-load containers for side-load trucks, we’re going to those in those alleys,” he says. “The driver does not have to sit there and fight those containers and roll them in the alleys. We’re using the automated more and more on the multi-unit residences.”

St. Petersburg, FL
The city of St. Petersburg’s commercial operation runs six-day per week using a fleet of 13 front-loaders. The fleet consists of Peterbilt and Autocar chassis with Heil bodies ranging in model year from 2000 to 2005. The city offer bins in sizes from 1-cubic yard to 10-cubic yard. “We run seven routes a day and the average route is 150 stops per route, six days per week with a 4-yard container being the average size we use,” says Benjamin Shirley, director of sanitation. “The 8-yard containers can be placed anywhere because they’re a slant top. They’re the same height as a 4-yard container in front, but it’s the width and depth and the height that makes up the 8-yards. The 8-yarders come with side doors. We went to the slant top years ago because you’re not going to load a container any more than 6 yards with a side door unless you load it from the top. The 10-yarders, they’re primarily used for manufacturing docks that load them off of the dock for the height.”

The city also offers front-load compactors for certain businesses depending on the volume that they generate. “They’re not necessarily large enough for a roll-off compactor but they’re a little bit more than what an 8-yard would be,” says Shirley. “In certain cases, we offer the compactor unit ourselves, wherein it would be more beneficial to us to put one in, we would do it. Normally, the customer themselves would have to take care of that.”

When buying new trucks, the city normally looks at 40-yard bodies, according to Shirley. “We look at the safety features for the cab height and the step up,” he says. “All our trucks have two drivers, so we’re conscious of the fact that the height of the cab and the seating for the driver and passenger are important. A lot of trucks in this business don’t necessarily have but one driver on them, but ours operate with two. So we have to be conscious of that. We try to stay with uniform chassis and cabs in order to keep your parts supplies down. We have a lot of alleys, so you have to have a truck with a radiator of a certain size, because you pick up a lot of dust and leaves. We also require backup cameras for safety cameras, as well as backup alarms. We also let the driver determine how many mirrors he wants on each side, primarily for safety.”

Once a customer establishes service, the city sends an inspector out to the customer to determine the specific bin size and service needs. “Determining the service level is based on several things,” says Shirley. “Sometimes the customers themselves will have the same type business in another part of the city and they’ll go with that same level of service. You might have a drugstore and you would research it based on the area and the type of service they have there. Sometimes it’s a guess. It’s basically the size of the building. You might start them out with a certain size and then if they need more service you increase or decrease it.”

“We have a container maintenance department, and they have a delivery truck,” says Shirley. “The inspector would determine whether or not you’re going to need castors on it or whether it would just be a flat. The bin wagon is a pickup truck with a forklift mechanism on the back. We operate three of the bin wagons. The city has approximately 6,500 customers with about 4,100 total containers in our inventory; we have a lot of multiple users in a single container.”

Getting customer service right means paying attention to the customer’s needs. One thing that Shirley states emphatically is that drivers should make sure to clean up around the bins. “When you empty the container, and the container is overloaded and it falls on the ground when the driver dumps the container, you’ve got to make sure that you pick that debris up,” he says. “With the heat and humidity down here, it’s crazy; the containers can get a bad odor.

e’re right on the bay and you have several fish plants and seafood stores, and the smell can be terrible. We have spray units on the front loaders that have a deodorizer. We spray each can that has any type of wet food in it. The spray units are a 65-gallon tanks that we do a 5:1 mix of odor neutralizer. The tank is mounted on the side of the truck.”

New Braunfels, TX
The city of New Braunfels, TX, provides the solid waste collection for every business within the city. “We service around 1,768 customers,” states James Ballowe, solid waste manager. “We provide front-load containers ranging in size from 2 cubic yards up to 8-cubic yards. Anything over that, a private company is allowed to come in and do business within the city limits. We use four front-load vehicles and two rear-load vehicles. Being in the hill country, we deal with a lot of hills and a lot of tight entryways. There’s a lot of areas where front-loaders cannot maneuver, so we offer customers hand pickup and rear-load container service.”

The city has three Mack chassis with the Heil Durapak 28-yard body and one 2002 Peterbilt chassis with a McNeilus 30-yard body. Containers are serviced Monday through Saturday, and a business may request collection any number of days during that time period. The city has 12 employees in the commercial operation, operating with one person on the front loaders and two people on the rear loaders. “If we have notice ahead of time, then we’ll provide service on Sunday,” says Ballowe. “During the summer, being a tourist-type city, it gets pretty heavy, so the parks are pretty much packed. We take pride in what we’re doing. I give all the employees that are out there doing it day-after-day the credit. They’re the ones that are out there doing it for us.”

The rear-loaders that are used for commercial collection have a cable hydraulic lift allowing the truck to back up to a 3-yard container for service. “These containers are actually made different than the standard front-load containers,” says Ballowe. “There are ears on the side of the truck that a bar fits into. The cable gets hooked on the back of the container and then it’s hoisted up and emptied. We also have the semi-automated container lifter on the back, so we can service the 96-gallon containers.”

“We offer our customers consultations on the size of the containers that they need and the type of security measures they need in order to prevent illegal dumping, to make sure that they have the proper location for the containers and if they have any problems with insect infestations, weather, or vandalism,” says Ballowe. “We try to get very personal with the company and the customer so that we can try to help them keep their place of business clean.”

Selecting the type of truck often starts with word-of-mouth recommendations, states Ballowe. “Word of mouth is right up there on the top. In this business, if equipment’s not working, neither are we, because containers aren’t being picked up. We can’t afford the downtime. When we purchase the equipment, we need to make sure it’s a piece of equipment that we can depend on. Using the Mack chassis and the Heil body, they’ve been very dependable. They offer very good training to back that up with our mechanics. It’s a critical area, especially with the commercial side of business. You don’t want the complaints coming through city council so it’s imperative that we have a good piece of equipment that’s going to run day-in and day-out.”

Chula Vista, CA
Allied Waste Services, located in San Diego, provides residential, commercial and industrial refuse serves to the city of Chula Vista, CA, and outlying areas. The company uses a fleet of 89 vehicles, and recently added the Curotto Can to all of its 29 front loaders.

Unlike traditional front loaders, the Curotto Can uses an automated arm to grasp, lift and unload 32- to 90-gallon residential carts. The can is attached in about one minute, and the pickup-dump-return cycle takes under five seconds to complete.  The automated arm allows haulers to pick up bulky items and visually inspect the contents of the bin before emptying it into the hopper.

According to Rob Hutzler, a representative from Allied Waste, the ease of adaptability and the ability to standardize their fleet convinced the company to add the Curotto Can. “We demo’d it and tried it out and compared to the other units, and it’s just a more universal machine.

“A truly automated truck is its own unit,” explains Hutzler, “and with the Curotto Can you’re basically using a standard base which is a front-loader in general, and then adding the Curotto, sort of like an extra attachment. You could take the bucket out and do a commercial route, and if need be or if there is an issue with the automation itself—the Curotto can—you can remove it, and if you have a spare unit you can put that on and go about your route.”

According to John Curotto, co-owner of the Sonoma, CA-based Curotto Can Co., versatility is just one of the many advantages associated with his product. “It is the most productive and fastest automated system on the market.  There’s very few moving parts.  You can view all the contamination, everything being dumped because everything’s out in front instead of the driver looking back, which adds a lot of back and neck strain.”

“One truck, one function,” emphasizes Curotto. “You’re not having automated trucks and front loaders.  The can detaches in about 30 seconds with no tools.”

Another big advantage of the Curotto can is the ability to limit the contamination of recyclables.  “If you’re picking up recyclables,” says Hutzler, “a driver has a tendency to see what’s being dumped, and at that time can actually pull that out without contaminating the rest of the load. That’s a pretty good feature.”

Hutzler admits that the ability to preview the trash pick up has significantly reduced the amount of contamination.  “It has gone significantly down since we went single-stream in the city of Chula Vista, and obviously the Curotto Can helps with ‘less-contamination’ issues.”

Curotto also believes contamination is a strong selling point for his product. “You can view the contamination in the recycling, which is a big problem—not only contamination in recycling, but hazardous material in the trash. On a wholly automated truck with the arm behind the driver, they cannot see it nor, even if they could see it, could they pull it out. With our product you can.”

Florence, AL
The city of Florence, AL, operates a total of eight trucks to service 1,000 containers at 800 customer locations throughout the city of 38,000 people.

“We run two trucks on a night shift which operates from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m.,” says David Koonce, manager of solid waste, streets and recycling for the city. “Then we run two trucks from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on a daily basis. We offer Saturday service, running one truck early Saturday morning. We have four McNeilus Atlantic-series front-loaders on Mack MR chassis. The other four are backup trucks that are quite a bit older that we only run in an emergency. Three of the bodies are 40-yard and one is a 36-yard.

“We prefer to do what we can on the night shift because of the traffic,” Koonce says. “But there are a lot of things, especially in the residential areas, where we have to run on the day shift just to keep from disturbing people. It ends up working out to be about 50/50. If we have a choice, we put it on the night shift.  All the areas of retail and industry that are not near residential areas are where we do most of our night shift work, such as the mall. We offer 4-, 6- and 8-cubic-yard bins. We have had a night shift for years, and it’s a tremendous advantage to us. It’s a whole lot safer and they can be more efficient at night because they can get around better.”

Typically, Koonce looks at what others are buying for trucks in selecting the ones he uses. “I choose the top two or three trucks, and then I get the sales company to bring me a demo in. I get my drivers lined up and they actually drive these trucks. They come, go over them, and try them out. I tell the salesmen when they come onsite that they’re selling to the driver, because there’s nobody here that knows any more about what they want in a truck than the driver. Of course, the salesman always has recommendations. We want to make sure that we pick what we feel are the top two or three in the industry. The drivers actually make the decision, and we write our specs along those lines. You make them a part of the process and have input into what they like and what they don’t. It gives them a sense of pride, and they’ve been a part of the process. It makes them take care of their truck and makes them feel like it is truly their truck.”

Writer Lynn Merrill is a consultant based in southern California.

MSW - July/August 2006