MSW Management | Editorial

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By Sam Masson

Daylight Savings Time has come to an end again, heralding the arrival of Halloween, harkening towards the coming winter, and yielding my resignation that summer is inescapably over. Ever since I was in grade school, I’ve dreaded the annual return of Standard Time, or, as I’ve preferred to call it, “Daylight Losing Time.”

Following the time change, I now emerge from a long day in the office, only to be greeted by darkness... although I notice the days getting shorter as the weeks pass, the sting’s especially strong on the night I agree to trade an extra hour of Sunday sleep in order to lose an hour of light on the following Monday. However, the reason we continue to observe the time change is because there’s plenty of good use for it.

The advent of Daylight Savings Time had to do with maximizing the available hours of sunlight and minimizing the use of auxiliary lights. At the time, conserving energy meant using fewer candles and less lamp oil. Today, though, one quarter of residential electrical use is for powering lights, TVs, and small household appliances. Our use of these technologies increases when we’re at home, and since we tend to be home when it’s dark, turning the clocks forward one hour during the summer saves us all money.

You can read more about getting the most out of your electricity in our sister publication, Distributed Energy. But, there’s another important benefit to our semi-annual time change, and that’s making our streets safer. An extra hour of sunlight on the tail end of the day has been shown to reduce traffic accidents in the summer, and an extra hour during winter mornings makes it safer for children waiting for the school bus or riding their bikes.

Children aren’t our only precious investments who are out on the road early in the morning; our residential waste collectors are on the streets early each day, running their routes amid the frenzied morning commuters and parents trying to get their kids to school on time. Equipping our workers with reflective vests is one way to make them a little bit safer, but giving them a little bit more light—not to mention an extra degree or two of warmth—may do even more for their safety and comfort while they do their job. And the collectors’ safety and comfort certainly ought to equate to managers’ peace of mind. Minimizing downtime and maximizing efficiency saves everybody money and headaches.

I hope you’ll enjoy our cover story, about keeping collection vehicles up-and-running and out on the road, and, as you read, I invite you to remember the interrelation between the trucks and the people who use them. Keeping your fleet’s chassis and bodies in good working order is as important as making sure your personnel are able to work safely and return home each day in the same condition as when they left. As you’ll read in the article, another way that collectors’ mechanized and human workforces are connected is that the foundation of fleet maintenance lies in having a well-trained, observant field staff. Technological advances such as auto-lubing and auto-filtration certainly help, but you need to have a driver that’s trained to recognize and report the first signs of trouble, before a minor problem becomes a major one.

Without proper monitoring and inspection, hours of downtime can quickly turn into days or weeks, and repair costs can grow from hundreds of dollars to thousands. Who’s going to tell you about how your trucks are holding up, so that you can make well-informed, cost-effective solutions to nip a problem in the bud before it gets out of hand? The answer is that it’s the people who are behind the wheel of your trucks, or working in the street behind them... and no amount of money spent on cutting-edge technology or expert repair technicians can measure up to the potential savings that your collection force can provide for you with by giving you accurate, up-to-date information about how your fleet’s holding up.

So, while you’re taking care of your trucks, don’t forget to take good care of the people who work on them. And, also, don’t forget to bring a jacket with you... winter’s almost here!

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MSW - November/December 2006