Garbage for Thought

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imp

Senior Member
The U.S. has an incredible number of garbage trucks in operation. The two largest waste-disposal companies, Waste Management and Republic Services together operate over 48,000 trucks! There are additionally 27,000 other waste-disposal companies in the country. Some will have but one truck, others many, but makling the guess that the average is four trucks per company, which may be a low number, we have well over 150,000 trucks.

In 2001, the National Waste and Recycling Association called out the number at 148,000. Since then, industry revenue has grown 46%, which suggests an increase in the total number of trucks, maybe up around 200,000!

Given a population of 321 million people, that means there is a garbage truck available to service 1600 folks, men, women, and children. Does that seem about right?


:rolleyes:

imp
 

Seems right to me. Have you ever seen a garbage strike? It's dangerous. All that filth attracts flies and vermin and spreads disease. I think I'd rather have too many trucks and live in a very clean environment. We have Waste Management where I live. Just one guy driving a truck with a claw that extends and grabs the trash buckets and empties them. It's weird to see and if you're driving behind one, expect a very long commute, because there's no second guy riding shotgun to tell the driver to pull over and let the traffic pass.
 
Thanks for this fascinating info! It ranks right up there with some of mine...
 

Where I live here in Arizona, the general trash is picked up twice a week on Tuesday and Friday. Selective trash, certain types of papers and plastics, on Wednesday.

The general trash is picked up by one of those one man trucks that pick up the trash buckets and dump them into the truck. A rather fast and efficient way to pick up the trash. The selective trash is a truck and a couple of folks that pick up the smaller bins and toss the contents into the truck.
 
They just introduced the claw trucks here last January. Used to be 3 men working a truck. Now there is only one most times, so lots of unskilled jobs lost. The truck has to make two passes on the street now, instead of just one. In the long run it works out the same in time spent. Not a good trend.
 
NancyNGA said:
They just introduced the claw trucks here last January. Used to be 3 men working a truck. Now there is only one most times, so lots of unskilled jobs lost. The truck has to make two passes on the street now, instead of just one. In the long run it works out the same in time spent. Not a good trend.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was time spent that worries the cities and their budgets. It is the cost of the service. The service, if provided by private sources needs to be competitive in cost, and if within the cities operation they must trim costs or lose to competitors.
 
This is just one more 'over population' problem facing our planet, sadly a planet that is beginning to rebel.
 

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