From: Have You Heard the Latest About Automated Collection
The Automator
The Curottos have four successive generations in the trash industry. The great grandfather joined and became a shareholder of Sunset Scavenger in San Francisco during Franklin Roosevelt’s first administration. The great grandfather married into the Fontana family, the first family of Bay Area trash collectors, moved to Sonoma, and opened his own collection operation. Each subsequent generation had a son named John, continuing this professional legacy to this day.
When Sonoma County implemented the Green Waste Program in the early 1990s, the Curottos were concerned about the prospect of transitioning into collecting with automatic side-loaders and contamination in the carts. The Curottos were used to rear-loaders where crew members can quickly inspect the cart before emptying it in the hopper. How could this collection, they asked, be done efficiently with an automated side-loader?
The Curottos spent nine years in research and development using different units on their own routes. In 2000, the family put the product on the market. Essentially, the final product is an attachment to a front-end loader. The attachment is a 4.6-cubic-yard container on a metal skid that the forks of the front-end loader insert through to carry the container. Attached behind the container is an automated arm that can grab between a 32- to 106-gallon cart and has a lift capacity of 500 pounds. The arm extends out 60 inches and has the ability to not only lift from any place within the 60 inches, making tight collection spots easier, but can lift the cart and roll it back over the container, thereby eliminating the problem of filling only one side of the container and minimizing spillage. By evenly distributing the waste into the container, loads are maximized before dumping into the compactor.
Jason Becker of CLM Sanitation has decided to transition from the automatic side-loader to the Curotto Can for the following reasons:
The Curotto Can is not computer oriented. If there is a break, it is easily repaired.
Repairs to the Curotto Can are done without keeping the truck in the garage. The can is dropped off, a new can put on, and the truck is back on the route while the can is being repaired.
Because the cart is emptied into a container, he says, the dumping is quicker than an automatic side-loader. After seven or eight carts have been emptied into the container, the trash is loaded into the truck’s hopper and the packer is engaged. This strategy of collection has allowed CLM to increase the number of stops on the routes by 18% (550 to 650 stops).
Since the operator views the trash being dumped into the container in front of him, there is more oversight of the trash and less contamination.
The Curotto Can will handle bulky items and white goods. This eliminates a second collection vehicle coming out to collect.
By having the arm out in front as opposed to the side, Becker believes, less education is needed for the customer. He had sent carts to a new neighborhood he would soon be collecting from. He did not place any educational material on the cart. Becker put a good driver on the Curotto Can and in two weeks had the new clients successfully placing their carts out by putting stickers on improperly placed carts. Becker eliminated CLM’s usual practice of providing every customer with brochures explaining placement issues involved with automated collection. Becker believes that the ability of the front-end loader to collect hard-to-get carts reduces significantly the educational demands associated with traditional automated collection.
Curotto Can sells more units each year, according to the company. The price depends on quantity purchased and current metal prices, but a single unit retail price hovers in the $18,000-and-change range. Manufacturers of front-end loaders will provide them with Curotto-ready systems for both left- and right-hand drive trucks.
Several competitors to Curotto also have products that make front-end loaders into automators. Heil, through its sister company Bayne, makes the Universal Carry Can. It differs from the Curotto Can by only having a semi-automated tipper and not an arm to collect the cart.
Land and Lakes Disposal began in Matteson, IL, and provides commercial and residential collection. It is moving its front-end loader fleet to automated collection by purchasing the PAC built by Perkins Manufacturing out of Romeoville, IL. Perkins President Robert Mecchi says it started building the PAC because of customer demand for an alternative to automatic side-loaders.
“It’s Safety, Stupid”
There are so many facets to automated collection that even its biggest detractors find one to persuade them to implement if the conditions are right to do so. Chattanooga, TN’s head of sanitation Perry Fergerson puts it bluntly:
“People’s fears of automation are true. Keeping up with the carts is a pain. People move and take them. City ordinances must be changed, and there must be enforcement. You have to run more miles because you go down the streets twice. Maintenance is higher. But from a risk management point of view, I do not see how you could not go to automation. The City of Chattanooga had an accidental death. Slingers take chances, and one was run over by a rear-loader. One death makes you see the situation in a different perspective. Trash collection is one of the top-10 most dangerous occupations a person can do. This is what automation is all about. I hate the dang things.”
In 2005, the City of Prince George in Canada had 200 lost hours because of injuries during the collection of trash. In 2006, after it went fully automated for a year, there were no lost hours from injuries.
Thornton, CO, saw its workers’ compensation insurance premiums drop 60% after implementing automated refuse collection.
Longmont, CO, went from spending a half-million dollars on workers’ compensation over a three- to four- year period, but after it implemented automated collection the amount fell to a few thousand dollars.
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These anecdotal stories underscoring the lower risk of automation are heard again and again among communities that have made the transition.
The Checklist
Implementing automated collection is hard. It involves a lot of planning, developing political and popular support, working with unions on what is best for the excess labor, and devising strategies and policies to handle the inevitable operational difficulties that result in automated implementation. The case studies above hit on many of these issues. Kevin Callen, a person with whom this author has worked on several projects, of WasteBid.com Inc., gave a presentation to SWANA’s Collection Symposium in 2005 in which he presented a checklist of actions and questions for anyone thinking of transitioning to automated collection. The following is a modification of that checklist.
- Analyze costs showing potential savings and benefits.
- Attain political buy-in with realistic understanding of potential problems.
- Conduct legal research on codes, draft ordinances, present to city management, finalize ordinances, submit to Council.
- Develop high-level responsibilities and implementation schedule.
- Procurement of carts, trucks, contracted haulers
- Development of multiple-year contracts for equipment with incentives and disincentives, warranties, and training of operators and mechanics
- Space for storage and assembly of carts
- Distribution and maintenance of carts
- Write new job description for automated drivers.
- Secure any expected salary changes.
- A timetable for the hiring and training for any new workers associated with this program
- Helping displaced workers
- Development of a public education campaign to include possible focus groups, theme, direct mailings, notices on bills, Web sites, newspaper ads, cart art, cart hangers, and
enforcement tags - Development of detailed education on implementation plan for politicians or senior management
- Analyze day-of-week change, establish districts, draft routes, test routes with drivers, and develop a process for continually updating routes.
- Information systems, including work orders, handling complaints, customer relationship management, billing..
- Develop detailed implementation plan based on results of procurements, existing scheduled collections, decide whether transition occurs all at once or over phased period of time.
- Develop phone banks to handle customers’ calls during transition period.
- Contract with labor pool to assist in all facets of the transition period.
- Implement rollout.
- Maintain political support.
January-February 2008
From: Have You Heard the Latest About Automated Collection
The Automator
The Curottos have four successive generations in the trash industry. The great grandfather joined and became a shareholder of Sunset Scavenger in San Francisco during Franklin Roosevelt’s first administration. The great grandfather married into the Fontana family, the first family of Bay Area trash collectors, moved to Sonoma, and opened his own collection operation. Each subsequent generation had a son named John, continuing this professional legacy to this day.
When Sonoma County implemented the Green Waste Program in the early 1990s, the Curottos were concerned about the prospect of transitioning into collecting with automatic side-loaders and contamination in the carts. The Curottos were used to rear-loaders where crew members can quickly inspect the cart before emptying it in the hopper. How could this collection, they asked, be done efficiently with an automated side-loader?
The Curottos spent nine years in research and development using different units on their own routes. In 2000, the family put the product on the market. Essentially, the final product is an attachment to a front-end loader. The attachment is a 4.6-cubic-yard container on a metal skid that the forks of the front-end loader insert through to carry the container. Attached behind the container is an automated arm that can grab between a 32- to 106-gallon cart and has a lift capacity of 500 pounds. The arm extends out 60 inches and has the ability to not only lift from any place within the 60 inches, making tight collection spots easier, but can lift the cart and roll it back over the container, thereby eliminating the problem of filling only one side of the container and minimizing spillage. By evenly distributing the waste into the container, loads are maximized before dumping into the compactor.
Jason Becker of CLM Sanitation has decided to transition from the automatic side-loader to the Curotto Can for the following reasons:
The Curotto Can is not computer oriented. If there is a break, it is easily repaired.
Repairs to the Curotto Can are done without keeping the truck in the garage. The can is dropped off, a new can put on, and the truck is back on the route while the can is being repaired.
Because the cart is emptied into a container, he says, the dumping is quicker than an automatic side-loader. After seven or eight carts have been emptied into the container, the trash is loaded into the truck’s hopper and the packer is engaged. This strategy of collection has allowed CLM to increase the number of stops on the routes by 18% (550 to 650 stops).
Since the operator views the trash being dumped into the container in front of him, there is more oversight of the trash and less contamination.
The Curotto Can will handle bulky items and white goods. This eliminates a second collection vehicle coming out to collect.
By having the arm out in front as opposed to the side, Becker believes, less education is needed for the customer. He had sent carts to a new neighborhood he would soon be collecting from. He did not place any educational material on the cart. Becker put a good driver on the Curotto Can and in two weeks had the new clients successfully placing their carts out by putting stickers on improperly placed carts. Becker eliminated CLM’s usual practice of providing every customer with brochures explaining placement issues involved with automated collection. Becker believes that the ability of the front-end loader to collect hard-to-get carts reduces significantly the educational demands associated with traditional automated collection.
Curotto Can sells more units each year, according to the company. The price depends on quantity purchased and current metal prices, but a single unit retail price hovers in the $18,000-and-change range. Manufacturers of front-end loaders will provide them with Curotto-ready systems for both left- and right-hand drive trucks.
Several competitors to Curotto also have products that make front-end loaders into automators. Heil, through its sister company Bayne, makes the Universal Carry Can. It differs from the Curotto Can by only having a semi-automated tipper and not an arm to collect the cart.
Land and Lakes Disposal began in Matteson, IL, and provides commercial and residential collection. It is moving its front-end loader fleet to automated collection by purchasing the PAC built by Perkins Manufacturing out of Romeoville, IL. Perkins President Robert Mecchi says it started building the PAC because of customer demand for an alternative to automatic side-loaders.
“It’s Safety, Stupid”
There are so many facets to automated collection that even its biggest detractors find one to persuade them to implement if the conditions are right to do so. Chattanooga, TN’s head of sanitation Perry Fergerson puts it bluntly:
“People’s fears of automation are true. Keeping up with the carts is a pain. People move and take them. City ordinances must be changed, and there must be enforcement. You have to run more miles because you go down the streets twice. Maintenance is higher. But from a risk management point of view, I do not see how you could not go to automation. The City of Chattanooga had an accidental death. Slingers take chances, and one was run over by a rear-loader. One death makes you see the situation in a different perspective. Trash collection is one of the top-10 most dangerous occupations a person can do. This is what automation is all about. I hate the dang things.”
In 2005, the City of Prince George in Canada had 200 lost hours because of injuries during the collection of trash. In 2006, after it went fully automated for a year, there were no lost hours from injuries.
Thornton, CO, saw its workers’ compensation insurance premiums drop 60% after implementing automated refuse collection.
Longmont, CO, went from spending a half-million dollars on workers’ compensation over a three- to four- year period, but after it implemented automated collection the amount fell to a few thousand dollars.
These anecdotal stories underscoring the lower risk of automation are heard again and again among communities that have made the transition.
The Checklist
Implementing automated collection is hard. It involves a lot of planning, developing political and popular support, working with unions on what is best for the excess labor, and devising strategies and policies to handle the inevitable operational difficulties that result in automated implementation. The case studies above hit on many of these issues. Kevin Callen, a person with whom this author has worked on several projects, of WasteBid.com Inc., gave a presentation to SWANA’s Collection Symposium in 2005 in which he presented a checklist of actions and questions for anyone thinking of transitioning to automated collection. The following is a modification of that checklist.
- Analyze costs showing potential savings and benefits.
- Attain political buy-in with realistic understanding of potential problems.
- Conduct legal research on codes, draft ordinances, present to city management, finalize ordinances, submit to Council.
- Develop high-level responsibilities and implementation schedule.
- Procurement of carts, trucks, contracted haulers
- Development of multiple-year contracts for equipment with incentives and disincentives, warranties, and training of operators and mechanics
- Space for storage and assembly of carts
- Distribution and maintenance of carts
- Write new job description for automated drivers.
- Secure any expected salary changes.
- A timetable for the hiring and training for any new workers associated with this program
- Helping displaced workers
- Development of a public education campaign to include possible focus groups, theme, direct mailings, notices on bills, Web sites, newspaper ads, cart art, cart hangers, and
enforcement tags - Development of detailed education on implementation plan for politicians or senior management
- Analyze day-of-week change, establish districts, draft routes, test routes with drivers, and develop a process for continually updating routes.
- Information systems, including work orders, handling complaints, customer relationship management, billing..
- Develop detailed implementation plan based on results of procurements, existing scheduled collections, decide whether transition occurs all at once or over phased period of time.
- Develop phone banks to handle customers’ calls during transition period.
- Contract with labor pool to assist in all facets of the transition period.
- Implement rollout.
- Maintain political support.