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Have You Heard The Latest About Automated Collection? By Chace Anderson
The drive for newer and better technology to assist human endeavors is nearly a social norm. In his early stand-up routine, Woody Allen tells how his father became technologically unemployed when a mechanical instrument only so long (Allen would hold his hands close together out in front of him) replaced the work his father had done for so many years. Although Allen describes the event as a sad day for his family, he goes on to say that the really crushing blow came when his mother immediately ran out and purchased one. Industries spend great sums of resources on research and development to create items and systems to maximize efficiencies so that profit increases and human exertion decreases. The acceptance of new ways of doing things is anything but monolithic. There is a push-me–pull-me tension that managers have with technology. Certainly some managers resist legitimate moves toward routing software and automated collection because it will mean dealing with issues that currently were not visible, such as potential layoffs similar to Allen’s father. These are the managers who must be pushed into incorporating modern management tools to increase efficiencies. The fascination with technology and the belief in progress, however, will pull other managers into searching for newer and better means of doing the job. There is a love affair, of sorts, we humans have with gadgetry. A short walk through an airport, a Starbucks, or the vendors area at WASTECON will provide many examples of men and women wearing Batman-like utility belts with Velcro-strapped smart phones, computers, televisions, global positioning systems, and all the individual plugs and extra batteries that go with them, while their ears glow blue with heated conversations. Are these many devices purchased and used because efficiencies and costs were calculated? Or are we users afraid of being seen as modern Luddites who ignore the advantages of technology even when the cost versus benefit calculation would advise against such purchases? Managers of waste collection operations sometimes tug at new ways of doing things when, in their guts, these managers know that it will not work in their situation. A case in point is Mill Valley Refuse. Mill Valley is an exclusive suburb of San Francisco just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, just off of Highway 1. This 4-square-mile town has a bohemian legacy with rumored sightings of the ever-cool Carlos Santana and legendary Bonnie Raitt milling among the “new” dwellers made up of pixel executives and hedge-fund managers. There is no grid system to the Mill Valley roads. They wind up the hillsides until they look more like pedestrian walkways studded with $120,000 vehicles used for quick dashes to the local Peet’s Coffee house or to take the next generation of Giants to Little League practice. In other words, the cars line these narrow trails throughout the day. Jim Iavaoni is the son of one of the four founders of Mill Valley Refuse, and his three partners are, in turn, the descendents of the other three. Every working day, 30 to 35 semi-automated rear-loaders, each staffed with a one-person crew, work the roads in Mill Valley and other similar communities in the area, collecting trash, yardwaste, and recycling nearly all on the same day from 300 to 400 homes per truck. A waste consultant had urged Iavaoni to automate his fleet. Wanting to keep abreast of cutting-edge collection, Iavaoni tested automated collection vehicles, such as the drop-frame Labrie, but found what his instincts had probably known all along: The roads were too narrow, the cars too stacked, the shoulders nonexistent, and the carts too far away from the full extension of the arm. Within the context of his geographic situation, Iavaoni and his partners at Mill Valley Refuse have made pragmatic changes such as implementing routing software, semi-automated collection, and dual-steering trucks that have all helped the company to be more efficient. The company, however, continues to have no fully automated truck in its fleet. In 2006, the Department of Sanitation in New York City operated 5,043 rear-loading trash trucks collecting 53,516 tons of curbside residential refuse a week and added another 9,000 tons per week in rolloff containers to service a total of 8.2 million residents. Another 1,933 curbside rear-loading collection vehicles and 67 containerized trucks collect 12,200 additional tons of recyclables a week. In all of these collections, not a single automated side-loader was used. Again, the density of the city’s population, location of the trash, and sheer volume of traffic make automated side-loaders impossible to implement in New York City. On the coast of Oregon, Lincoln County sits along the Pacific Ocean and has become a getaway for people who wish to battle the wind and seas to see whales. Named for the president, Lincoln County has 992 square miles with 72 inches of rain a year. Raccoons conspire with the wind to open cart and can lids, says Lonnie French who has been with North Lincoln Sanitation for 16 years. The company has developed strap-down lids for greater protection. The local market has a substantial vacation population in town homes where managers pay the collection company to come onto the premises to collect the trash. Although North Lincoln Sanitation continues to look at automation, there are areas within its district where it makes little sense. From small to large and from coast to coast, there are examples of geographic, environmental, and service demands that are real barriers to implementing automatic collection. No collection strategy is universal; each must be seen within the context of the time and place in which it is being considered.
Public Sector Automation Sam A. McNeiland joined the city in 1989 as Edmond’s solid waste superintendent. He has 37 years in the waste profession, beginning with a new company his boyhood friends had started called Browning Ferris Industries. In 2004, the Oklahoma chapter of the American Public Works Association named him Solid Waste Manager of the Year. McNeiland moved Edmond’s sanitation department from a workforce of 58 people using 27 rear-loader collection trucks servicing 14,500 homes to 20 people using seven automated side-loaders, and one rear-loader collecting 45,000 carts from 28,000 homes over a 45-hour work week with each truck collecting up to 1,200 homes a day. The hurdles McNeiland jumped over were both external and internal. First, he diminished the level of service from twice- to once-per-week trash collection. This meant developing political support internally and providing 96-gallon carts to the customers. The second external barrier was to educate the public on proper use of the carts. This is a critical need when using automatic side-loaders. The placement of the cart is important because the goal is to minimize the number of times the driver gets out of the cab. McNeiland implemented a strategy of easing the customers into automation. He delivered the carts in 1994 and collected them for two years using semi-automated rear-loaders. Government “cannot force things down people’s throats,” McNeiland says. In 1996 Edmond introduced the automatic side-loader collection vehicles after the public had two years of being trained on using the cart and placing the cart correctly at the curb. Taking the second weekly collection away from the customers is always a difficult move, more so when automated collection is being implemented. Residents fear that the cart will not hold two collections per week. The collection manager wants to mitigate that fear but also wants to hold firm in his belief that the driver of an automatic side-loader should stay in the cab. This tension can often result in a flood of calls to the mayor’s office and, if that mayor is not fully behind the collection strategy, can result in the driver getting out of the cab more than is reasonable, thereby ruining its collection efficiency. Edmond introduced a city-coded, 30-gallon bag that it sells on demand for $1.50. Citizens can put only their excess trash into the coded bag. When the weekly trash collection occurs, the driver notes the coded bag alongside the cart. A GPS on the truck initiates a microwave signal using a constellation of medium Earth-orbit satellites provided by the United States Department of Defense to signal back to Edmond’s base yard the address of the coded bag. As these data points are received from the trucks that morning, a route is developed back at headquarters for a rear-load packer truck to collect the coded bags. Each driver is also equipped with a BlackBerry to receive paperless work orders and take pictures of obstructions to be e-mailed back to the office as problem verification. If these are the external elements that must be navigated, the internal concerns are, as already mentioned, political support and a strong maintenance program. “Do not cut pennies on maintenance,” McNeiland advises, if managers want an automated collection program to operate well. McNeiland evaluates the cost of his trucks through a life cycle analysis, which is the assessment of a given product’s cost of service throughout its lifespan, and purchases vehicles based on this net cost. Currently McNeiland operates Heil DuraPacks. Heil offered to guarantee the hydraulic cylinder for five years. Calculating these kinds of guarantees into a life cycle analysis gave Heil a lower net cost over its competitors even though the unit price was between $15,000 and $20,000 more. McNeiland operates his trucks for seven years and spends, on average, approximately $2,500 per month on maintenance. Although this seems a high cost, McNeiland says that it is half the monthly cost of the previous trucks from a different vendor. Using technology, life cycle analysis in procurement and automated collection have kept the cost of service low. In a competitive bid process, the sanitation department was the lowest of four competitors. The savings for Edmond amounts to $1.3 million a year out of a total budget between $6 million and $7 million. Private Sector Automation The private sector purchases these automated trucks for municipal and subscription services alike. CLM Sanitation has been servicing residents and municipalities in and near the Atlanta, GA, area. It opened its doors in 1987 and is still a family-owned business. “Subscription amounts to 80% of our customers, while municipal takes up the remaining 20%,” says Jason Becker, chief executive officer. “It used to be that the customer would tell the hauler where to collect the can from,” says Becker. “But once you start explaining the cost benefit of using automation, the customer sees the difference in his or her bill.” The company also sees a savings, he says, “once 50% to 60% of the company’s customer base is collected with automated trucks, the savings are realized.” Garbage outside the cart is a problem, but one that is fixable. Customers who regularly have more than one cart’s worth of trash receive a second cart. The bulk of the cost is in the dumping of the first cart, with the second being incidental when compared to a driver’s time getting in and out of the cab. Beyond these customers are the random extra-bag setters. On CML’s routes these average 30 customers per route who leave excess trash outside the can. Drivers get out and collect these bags. As with McNeiland in Edmond, Iavaoni with Mill Valley Refuse, and French in Lincoln County, Becker emphasizes strong routing. “The $45,000 a company spends on routing software and the evaluations a professional waste-routing firm does pays for itself,” Becker says. CML incorporates the average number of times a driver gets out of the cab into the structure of the routing. His automated trucks have routes of 550 stops. This doubles the number of stops his rear-loaders were making at 225 a route. Preventive maintenance is emphasized by CML, and the average monthly cost for this effort is $1,200. A broken automated side loader is expensive because of parts and the downtime. Becker becomes most passionate when he discusses CML’s recent shift in how it collects the carts. Partly because of the speed at which it does its work and partly because of the benefit in maintenance, CML is transitioning from the automated side-loader to the Curatto Can. Chace Anderson is a consultant with Gershman, Brickner and Bratton, Inc. MSW - January/February 2008
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