City of Lakeville’s New Mechanical Truck Makes Trash Collection More Efficient

Trash collection — we do this almost daily in our homes, apartments, and sometimes at work. We don’t often think about the weight of the cans or how the trash gets dumped into the truck. Most of us just take a bag of garbage and toss it into a can, roll it to the curb, and put the can away when it’s empty.

Large trash companies have improved safety for their staff, improved ergonomics to reduce injuries, and greatly improved efficacies with automated processes versus manual operations. But  that brings up the question: Why are large companies making these improvements, but our municipalities still doing manual dumping?

All our cities are different, be it their size, population, budget, or staffing levels. But one thing is for sure, all cities have to deal with trash of some type. At city hall it may get put in a can like at home and rolled to the curb. It could be placed in a dumpster and hoisted into a trash truck, but I’m willing to bet we all have parks with trash cans. Depending on the size of your community, you may have multiple parks, and I’m willing to bet many trash cans.

The City of Lakeville recently improved their trash process with a mechanical truck that dumps all their trash cans with a single employee, greatly reducing staff time, staff injuries, and increasing efficiency.

New Parks Mini Garbage Truck - July 2022

Submitted by: Troy Walsh, Loss Control Consultant