Garbage and How it Gets Into The Truck

While sitting here in my house on this relatively mild Tuesday, with the wind blowing outside, I had a thought.

Today is trash collection day for many of my neighbors. The garbage trucks from the four commercial companies that service my little neighborhood here in Western Michigan are all privately owned, contracted by property owners, not a governmental agency ... and are operated by one man.

He (they are all males) drives, manipulates several levers that control various mechanical arms that extend, grab the can (all of which are provided to the customer, so they are all exactly alike) lift it, empty it, return it to the ground, and then retract. The whole process takes seconds and the driver moves on to the next house. The driver is not subjected to any physical strain at all.

On the other hand...

While I was spending a lovely month with my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in suburban Baltimore, Maryland, I noticed the garbage trucks there are operated by THREE people...one driver and two others who dismount as the truck nears its goal. These trucks are operated by a governmental agency and the driver and workers are employees of that agency.

When they arrive at a house, one or both of them lug one or more cans to the back, and then EITHER...

operate a control that hooks an arm to the can, lifts it and dumps the contents into the back, then lowered to be lugged back to the lawn by one of the workers OR... (and this is mostly what I observed)

...the workers lug the cans to each side of the rear repository at the rear of the truck and manually lift the cans (hopefully, though hardly ever, using legs and good body mechanics to lift; mostly, they use youthful arm and shoulder and back muscles) dump it, and either lugs it back (if it is large enough with wheels, say) or just throws it in the direction of the lawn.

Those guys probably do not last long in such a physically-demanding profession and I bet the company's workman's compensation premiums and claims are sky-high, to say nothing of the fact that forking out payroll, compensation, and benefits for THREE employees per truck as opposed to one must cost the government agency a ton in tax revenues.

One would think they would see a good way to cut costs.