Just when you might have thought I had nothing left to share from the former Veolia Warringah contract, I suddenly upload this footage! I captured this action way back in April 2009 during the school holidays, where I filmed a number of the existing Collex/Veolia trucks on a Friday prior to the upcoming takeover of the contract by URM. Looking back through my videos, it’s been over 10 years since I threw anything up of the manual vegetation collection in Warringah, so it seems about time I finally make this capture from long ago public. I still have a few more videos from the old Veolia contract to come one day in future, total blasts from the past and the cool era of truck equipment =D
In the late 1990s when Collex got their start in Warringah, I believe this was the time the kerbside vegetation service was introduced to residents. Householders would bin, box, bag and bundle their garden organics and once a month the rear loaders would come around to take everything away. All kinds of containers were used to hold the waste, from 55L round bins to 240L wheelie bins, old recycle crates, cardboard and foam boxes, even plant pots were filled, also a group of hessian sacks could be found crammed with veg. The 240L bins were sourced through the council or at the hardware store, so there were a range of different types in use, you could pick earlier ones with the distinct “Vegie Bin” stickers. I recall the weekend efforts by neighbours during summer mowing the lawns and cleaning out the gardens, it was also acceptable to present material on the nature strip days prior to the service taking place! Some of the set-outs by residents could get pretty massive and heavy as well - there was a 3 cubic metre limit per property, but that wasn’t always adhered to. This was pretty much the old school way of doing garden waste collections in areas of eastern Sydney, but only a couple councils continue to adopt this method today.
When I was just a kid, I remember seeing the Scania rear loaders that initially did the veg collections. The runner on the back would tell me to press the green button, on the control panel of what I now know was a Compaction Systems unit, and 5 year old Mitch pushed that button with all his might! haha There were three Scanias around and I recently learnt there was even a Merc Benz in the beginning, then in 2000 the company bought a brand new Volvo compactor for the veg runs. Once the new contract started in 2004 with Collex taking on the whole collections portfolio, the company ordered and deployed three new ACCOs with Compaction Systems Autopak bodies, featuring noticeable green signboards to advertise the vegetation service. All this time I thought these were 25m in capacity, but they may have actually been a touch smaller? No matter what body volume was available, these trucks packed excellent loads, squeezing in 8 to 9 tonnes on average, which is great considering the bulky/light nature of some material that went through the hoppers. These were great trucks all round though, awesome machinery to operate. I vividly recall my surprise first sighting of one of these, also the first occasion I laid eyes on what was the updated Compaction Systems wide comb lifter.
In my other Warringah veg videos of the ACCO rear loaders, I’ve only ever shown trucks 329 and 330, however now I can finally show off the third vehicle 328. I did put up a short video of 328 doing Ku-ring-gai clean-up ages ago, but this new video is the special one in its proper habitat where it belonged. Different about 328 as well was that it didn’t have the drum winch and trunnion locks, whereas 329/330 did, and I don’t really know why they did in the first place. That specific Friday when I was getting across to multiple Warringah trucks, about midmorning I located the permanent team that worked 328 not long after they returned from Kimbriki tip. In that suburb of Cromer I shot this single long part 1 clip as I followed them tackling a dead end street and then there’s part 2 with additional house presentations along the main road. You will realise the driver never makes an appearance at the back of the truck... the reason why is he was known to be a big bloke not really able to get in/out of the cab with ease. Pretty much all the loading duties are done by the offsider as you’ll see, but the driver does his best to get the truck positioned in the right spots and closer to the waste for quicker and effortless handling.
15 сен 2023
