There continues to be stubborn resistance to converting curbside collection from manual methods to automated systems. The industry must overcome the very real concerns of many municipalities in order to enable them to realize the significant advantages of automated collection.

By Charles D. Bader

Once hailed as 'tomorrow's key to improving collection efficiency,' automation is today's solution to making collection more cost-effective. Traditionally, collecting MSW is a labor-intensive business, often requiring as many as three workers per vehicle to lift and dump disposal containers. With the advent of automated lifting systems, however, collection requires fewer workers, thereby reducing labor costs and workers' compensation claims'. Automation [makes] collection faster and easier.

Those words appeared more than three years ago in a United States Environmental Protection Agency document titled "Collection Efficiency: Strategies for Success." Clearly EPA at that time expected automated curbside collection systems to sweep the nation, so to speak.

That simply has not happened yet. Toby Harris of Heil Environmental Industries in Chattanooga, TN, estimates that there are only about 10,000 automated sideloaders in use in the US today - out of a total population of roughly 90,000 refuse and recyclables collection trucks in operation. Harris should know: Heil commands a market share of more than 50% of the installed base of automated collection trucks, but we decided to find corroboration of such a surprisingly low 11% market penetration. We found that Wayne Worthington of the Wayne Engineering Corporation in Cedar Falls, IA, was a little more bullish of today's automated vehicle market share as compared to the in-service market, but not much. He estimates that about 10,000 refuse trucks are sold each year and that only about 1,500 of them are fully automated. That's 15%, but he concedes that the rate of growth is slow. "The sales rate of automated trucks grew a lot in the mid-'90s, from about 1,000 per year to today's 1,500 per year," he notes, "but recently the total annual sales have only been increasing by about 400 trucks a year."

What has happened to what many were sure would be a growth industry that municipalities would rush to buy from? From talking to truck manufacturers, private haulers, and municipal public works people, we found a consensus that five different factors contributed to an inertia that has been and still is keeping municipalities from committing to this type of automation: perceived higher costs, higher maintenance costs, union objections and layoff fears, "Our town is different" reservations, and a dislike of any change that involves risk.

Perceived Higher Costs

"Let's face it," says Rob Strange, sales manager of McNeilus in Dodge Center, MN. "If you only look at the capital acquisition costs - and believe me, many town councilmen do just that - the increased costs to convert to an automated collection system can be daunting. To begin with, the capital acquisition cost of an automated sideloader is 20% more than that of a manual rearloader. What's more, the useful life of an automated sideloader averages seven years compared to 10 years for a well-maintained rearloader. And then there are all those carts to buy at $35 to $50 each. I'm sure that in some municipalities the idea of automating collection dies in the town council before they learn of all the offsetting advantages and benefits."

Jerry Wickett, vice president of purchasing for Republic in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, provided corroborative information for all MSW collection. "Automated MSW collection vehicles make up only a small percentage of our fleet nationwide. The decision to convert to automated collection is driven solely by the communities we serve. They have to want the carts and be willing to pay for them. Often communities can't see any advantage."

While conceding that the capital costs are indeed higher, Worthington insists that this is the easiest of the objections to overcome. "We simply have to point out specifically and quantitatively how the increased productivity made possible with an automated system will more than offset the difference in capital costs and pay for itself in a reasonable period of time. We provide prospective buyers with referrals to other municipalities like theirs, and we use cost comparison worksheets that combine operational costs with capital costs [with an amortization schedule they are comfortable with] for both an automated system and the collection system they are currently using. This comparative analysis provides them with the monthly costs per home for each of the two systems."

Table 1 summarizes such a comparative cost analysis of two-man rearloaders and automated sideloaders that Wayne prepared for a small, 43,000-resident community in Illinois. As shown, the analysis uses hard numbers derived from the town's costs. It reflects the productivity improvements the automated sideloader attains by precluding the need for the rearloader laborer and the 25% increase in the homes that can be served in a day (a conservative 700 versus the 560 the town had been experiencing). Indeed, the entire comparative analysis is quite conservative since it does not include the soft cost savings the automated system produces from lower workers' comp costs, lower insurance rates, and less turnover. Even so, the hard monthly cost per home with the automated system was calculated to be $4.35, almost 25% less than the $5.78 with the town's manual system. "For cities with more aggressive collection routes, a monthly cost per home can be reduced to below $4," Worthington claims, "but this does not include disposal fees, which are consistent between all collection systems."

Cascade Engineering Container Group of Grand Rapids, MI, performed a similar comparative analysis. Although this analysis used different labor rates and factors, it reached a very similar conclusion: Over a five-year period, automated systems reduce monthly costs, per unit served, by 20.4%. "These are conservative savings too," points out Cascade's William Birth. "There are a number of ancillary benefits of automated collection that cannot be as readily projected quantitatively but that can generate community benefits and, in many cases, significant savings. After all, automation puts fewer large trucks on municipal streets, [reducing] wear and tear on municipal infrastructure; consumes less fuel, saving operating costs and lowering air emissions; creates a safer work environment; reduces labor-related costs like insurance, workers' comp days lost, and turnover costs; and can drive recycling, thereby reducing the amount of material to be landfilled.

"Equally important, it upgrades the level of service a community can provide its residents. Fixed-lid, mobile collection carts for refuse and recyclables are user friendly to the residents and improve the look of neighborhoods by eliminating or minimizing unsightly setouts and odors. Litter is reduced since animals are prevented from getting into garbage." As any municipal waste manager knows, litter is a costly problem: Collectors must retrieve the widely dispersed material on an item-by-item basis.

Automated Trucks Have Higher Maintenance Costs

"Automated collection trucks do have the reputation of being more expensive to maintain than do manual collection trucks," Worthington concedes. "This is largely because of the additional mechanical parts that do all the collection. In particular, the hydraulic system, which is the heart of every automated collection truck, is working all the time, lifting, packing, and lowering a thousand times a day. Traditionally the maintenance cost of automated collection trucks has been 1.67 times that of a manual collection truck."

Birth sets the ratio at 1.5:1, but the point is clear. Any municipality considering replacing its manual collection truck fleet with fully automated trucks always has faced significantly higher maintenance costs. In the cost analysis Wayne performed three years ago (Table 1), the monthly maintenance cost for the automated truck was $5,500 a month; that's $2,200 a month more than the comparable maintenance costs for each manual truck in the town's existing fleet.

Although the collection-truck industry manufactures manual trucks as well as automated ones, it has been working on the design of automated trucks in an attempt to drive down the maintenance costs of these vehicles. "Automated trucks have been evolving significantly over the last few years," Strange observes. "The combination of these advances in truck design and an emphasis on a good PM [preventative maintenance] and component replacement schedule has caused maintenance costs to go down steadily. As a result, automated collection trucks can be pretty reliable today."

What are some of these design advances? Gary Gengozian of Heil points to his company's Python automated arm. "The Python features John Deere 3-inch cushioned cylinders," he explains. "They allow the hydraulic operation to be much smoother, thereby saving wear on both the lift arm and the chassis. And the Python also features an enclosed oil bath gear box that virtually eliminates grabber gear wear, and it uses longer-wearing bearings, precision line-bored bearing journals, and air-over-hydraulic controls. It's a huge step forward in maintenance-friendly design. Our preliminary studies indicate that the maintenance costs of the Python arm will be $5,000 to $10,000 less than other automated systems."

Heil is not the only company addressing maintenance costs. Worthington reports that Wayne has just introduced a managed shutdown system to protect its collection trucks from expensive breakdowns. "If a radiator gets too low and starts to overheat, the system will both visually and aurally alert the driver," he points out. "If the driver doesn't take corrective action, the system will shut the truck engine down. Similarly, if the oil filter gets clogged, or if the oil volume gets too low, or if the oil temperature rises too much, the system will give increasing alarms over time and then shut down the truck's hydraulic system. What's more, the trucks now have permanent counters that count and record the number of arm cycles, pack cycles, and eject cycles in addition to the pump and [power take-off]. All of this represents a powerful PM system to ensure that corrective action can be taken prior to any breakdown."

Potential Labor Problems

Inherent to the conversion of a collection truck fleet to automated vehicles is the fact that fewer employees will be directly involved in the collection process. Not only is the crew of each truck reduced from two or three workers to just one, but there will be fewer trucks (and crews) needed to cover the routes. This inherent labor reduction is perhaps the primary factor in achieving increased productivity and lowering overall costs, but it has caused many municipalities to hesitate converting because they are reluctant to lay off all those municipal employees.

"That turns out to be a phantom issue," Worthington scoffs. "Municipalities usually never lay off garbage collectors. Indeed, their more pressing problem is usually finding reliable people willing to hang off the back of a truck, hop on and off repeatedly, and heave garbage for eight hours a day. There is such a high turnover rate that simple attrition will take care of most of the employee reduction involved in converting to automated collection. And interdepartmental transfers to other public works departments like streets, water, and sewer normally will handle the rest."

A local union might well object because such a conversion could take members out of its ranks and/or because it will cut down on overtime pay. However, remarks Christian LaPointe of Labrie Equipment in Saint-Nicolas, PQ, "there is more cooperation now between unions and municipality management. It has become clear that this form of automation has such a positive side for refuse collectors that a union cannot reasonably oppose the conversion outright. The substantial drop in workers' comp costs doesn't just save money for the municipality; it also reflects far fewer worker injuries. Moreover, when a municipality converts its fleet to automated collection vehicles, it creates a significant upgrade in job satisfaction and importance for the drivers. Garbage pickers become unit vehicle operators. So by cooperating in the transition, unions are helping their members."

Birth wholeheartedly agrees. "By retraining displaced collection fleet personnel to meet other municipal service requirements in public works or the water department, for example, a municipality provides career opportunities for these employees. Often they learn new skills and end up in a much better working environment. In most cases, these employees - and the municipality - are much better off."

"With or without union cooperation, the work force has to be carefully prepared for this transition," Strange cautions. "The municipality has to communicate its plans to its workers to allay their natural fears of being displaced by automation. Moreover, for practical reasons, the transition has to be carefully planned and timed. The public works departments of some municipalities time this transition to a season or other period when natural attrition is occurring. Then, by putting a hiring freeze in place for a period of time, they can normally place everyone who is left in a good position. Of course, this hiring freeze might necessitate unusual overtime expense before the transition is made and the realigned work force can be placed and trained in their new jobs, but that expense is certainly warranted. Once workers have made the transition, we have found [that] they never want to go back."

"Our Town Is Different"

Quite often, municipalities object to automating their collection systems because of local physical and/or procedural issues. Perhaps the most common of these is an unusual incidence of alleys and cul-de-sacs that the municipality staff perceives to be a barrier to automated collection vehicles. Other perceived barriers include a policy of curbside pickup of any and all materials, and conditions where there is no convenient place at the curb to set out carts. While local situations such as these seem like insurmountable barriers to automated curbside collection, that is rarely the case. As Strange says, "I have never seen a city where the conditions were totally different from those of some other city that has successfully converted to automated collection."

Of course, solutions to local situations such as these often involve a hybrid fleet consisting of one or more manual rearloaders in addition to an automated sideloader fleet. To quote Strange again, "Rearloaders will never go away. There are some areas where the use of an automated sideloader is impossible - or at least impractical. However, there isn't any city I know of that can't use automated sideloaders for some of its routes. And the higher percentage of automated trucks a city uses, the more productive its curbside collection of refuse and recyclables will be."

Moreover, the truck manufacturers are quite aware that there are local conditions that have created a barrier to practical automated curbside collection. As a result, some innovative trucks have been designed to enable automated curbside collection in many of these local situations. For example, Wayne Engineering has addressed the problem of collection in narrow alleys where refuse carts are set out against the alley fence.

"First we determined that you can physically drive a sideloader down any alley that will accept a rearloader," Worthington relates. "The problem usually is the swing of the arm after it picks up a cart. Often there isn't enough room in the alley to accommodate that swing. We concluded that if a truck-lift mechanism were designed to pick up a cart close to the truck, lift it straight up, dump it, and reset it in its original position without swinging out, automated collection in narrow alleys would be quite feasible. We have designed such a truck, and it works very well in narrow alleys."

Another solution to the narrow alley problem was developed in the city of Plano, TX. According to Plano Fleet Maintenance Manager Darrell Cokely, the city has alleys that might have T-sections, curves, up to half-mile lengths, overhanging trees, and lots of pedestrians, many of them children. This situation required several measures. First, the collection vehicles had to have a turning radius of 23 ft. and a maximum height of 12 ft. (The city passed an ordinance requiring that tree overhangs be maintained at a minimum height of 13 ft.) To deal with the pedestrian risk, Plano's automated trucks are equipped with a three-camera system, providing the driver with a view of the arm action, a view of the dump action, and a 127° view of the back of the truck. Yet another solution to this problem is in use in Phoenix, AZ. Deputy Public Works Director Mike Lopker reports that Phoenix owns eight trucks equipped with Heil's automated STARR system, which the manufacturer claims is the most maneuverable collection system in the industry. "It's true," Lopker remarks. "Because of its unique design, it has half the turning radius of any straight-body truck with comparable capacity. The loader is attached to a tractor on which is mounted the lift arm, so it can make very tight turns. It will go into even a small cul-de-sac and pick up the carts without having to back up, and it can maneuver into any alley, even a T-alley. What's more, it can carry larger loads than a conventional automated packer, yet the fuel consumption is the same. We had heard that the STARR might be the truck of the future. After using it, we think it may be the truck of today."

There are some municipalities that are committed to pick up everything residents set out at the curb - including outsized materials that do not fit in standard carts. In order to use automated collection, these municipalities reasoned, they would have to have a redundant pickup on its routes by manual collection trucks, each with a crew of a driver and at least one laborer hanging off the back. However, such a collection requirement is now being satisfied by at least two hybrid trucks: one designed by Labrie and the other by Heil.

The Labrie Helping Hand collection vehicle is an automated sideloader with a maneuverable, heavy-duty arm to pick up containerized refuse, recyclables, or greenwaste. It also has positioned the hopper at a low height on the curb side of the truck to permit the driver to manually pick up bags or loose refuse in addition to the automated pickup of the carts.

The City of Lexington, KY, initially bought five of these hybrid trucks and recently has acquired 11 more. According to Keith Bennett, operations manager for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, "With our city ordinance, people can put out extra refuse, usually in bags, alongside the containers. With our hybrid capability, a single truck can drive down the street, picking up and dumping containers automatically. When [the driver] sees a residence with extra refuse not in containers, he gets out of the cab, slings the bags into the hopper, and keeps on going. There's no need to send a second truck to pick up the bags. It doesn't slow us down much either. The last time I had a count done, there were only 16 stops for manual pickup on our 900-house routes. It's been a great benefit for us."

Also a hybrid collection truck, the Heil MultiPack essentially combines an automated sideloader design with a manual rearloader capability. It has an automated arm at the curb side and a hopper for manual loading at the rear. According to Gengozian, "The MultiPack can pick up curbside set-outs on either a complete manual or an automated route. It offers great flexibility because it can handle rearloader, sideloader, and even commercial routes. Not only is it ideal for routes with Œunlimited-at-the-curb' contracts, it is the perfect backup unit for a municipality's total fleet."

Some communities are so congested with on-street parking that there is no curb space for setting out carts for automated pickup. Of course, municipalities can prohibit on-street parking during specific collection hours, or they can advise residents to put their carts out at the base of their driveways. However, neither of these measures will be popular with residents.

Haul All of Lethbridge, AB, offers a system to address this problem. Large (up to 6 yd.³) containers are located at central drop-off points to serve 15-20 families. There, Haul All's semiautomatic sideloaders pick up and dump the self-tipping containers, reset them, and move on to the next drop-off point. The containers can be adapted for compost, recycling, or solid waste applications. The system also has obvious implications for efficient pickup on rural routes.

A Dislike of Change

Off the record, most of the manufacturers confide that the major reason why so many municipalities have declined to automate their collection systems is a dislike of change where any risk is involved. One of them quoted a prospect as telling him, "Our collection is going pretty smoothly, why should I shake things up and commit to something as risky as this?"

However, as more and more communities convert (however slowly), this predisposition might be changing. With the highly publicized conversion successes of cities such as Los Angeles and San Jose, CA, now being augmented by case studies of successful conversions around the country, the risk concern is diminishing. Indeed, some municipalities are not even opting for pilot programs prior to full conversion.

And as budgetary pressures on municipalities continue to grow, mere dislike of change is becoming a less tenable position for a municipality to take. After all, collection is a big-ticket line item in any municipal budget; SWANA estimates that collection represents 50% of a municipality's MSW management system costs. Today, particularly when a nearby town can point to significantly reduced operating costs resulting from converting its curbside collection, the question might well be, "Can I afford not to shake things up and commit to something that promises to have such a big payoff?"

Charles D. Bader is with Dateline II Communications in Los Angeles, CA.

MSW - Elements 2004