On The Route

Hello again. Now we are out on the "route". We've left the "Shed" and made it though town without incident. (Just as a side note, our modern facility is sometimes referred to as the "Shed" by the few old hands who remember when it really was a shed. Back then we worked out of an old tin building with little heat and rats in the walls. But all that is in the past, now we've got running water and everything.)
This is what we see as we make our way along the street. The cans are actually pretty easy to get when they are like this. You just pull up along side and grab 'em. The problems start when they are next to a tree, or maybe a mailbox for example. The arm on this truck is capable of doing major damage. Once I made toothpicks out of a 4x4 post. I'm not proud of this, but, like they say "stuff happens". Even one of those killer brick mailboxes is no match for a garbage truck on a rampage. People seem to think that if they can squeeze the can between a tree and a mailbox, everything is cool. But of course it's not. Sometimes people park their car in front of their garbage can. This is a stupid thing to do. When they find it still full of garbage, they call our office on the telephone and say we "missed" their garbage. But with our modern technology we have a Radio in the truck, and we keep a list of what, and why, and where.
This is what you see when you grab a can. You have to work with the mirror, but this is no problem, you get used to it pretty quickly. You can see the powerful jaws in action. As soon as you have a grip on it, you jerk it up off the ground, and dump into the hopper. On a good day most of it goes in. This would be a good place to bitch about those Styrofoam "peanuts", but I don't think I want to go there.

Next time we'll visit the Landfill.