When I shot this action back in April 2021, there wasn’t a great deal of footage from what I still label as the St George contract, but now there is an insane amount of video on RU-vid showing off just about the entire fleet of side loaders that have operated there during the last couple years. The joint St George operation goes back to early 2008 when Rockdale started collections with WSN, followed by Kogarah in November 2009 and lastly Hurstville in July 2010. Everything has been running business as usual since then, except for the fact that NSW mergers saw former Hurstville and Kogarah become Georges River Council and former Rockdale and Botany Bay create Bayside Council, plus there was SITA’s (SUEZ) buyout of WSN in 2011. The original contract term and multiple extension periods have seen the St George partnership running for almost 16 years, but shortly a modern regional tender will be awarded and in late 2024 a new massive enterprise will commence.
With such a lengthy service duration, eventually a group of new trucks was ordered and came through at the start of 2018, specifically to replace most of the fulltime garbage side loaders that had been worked very hard and weren’t hanging in there too well. Later a few new Dennis rear loaders were built and deployed for bulk bins and clean-up, but the new machinery that was supposed to upgrade the recycling and green waste fraction of the fleet never arrived... hmm it seems there was a reluctance within SUEZ to cash out on additional purchases =D So the original 12-15 year old ACCOs that were around in the beginnings are still around today getting the yellow and green lidded bins emptied, and will continue to do so until the next contract. Over the years a couple pairs of new side loaders have been allocated to St George, along with plenty of used vehicles sourced from multiple locations, but the abovementioned order for 10 new garbage side loaders was the only big fleet upgrade done throughout this whole period.
At first knowledge of these advanced side loaders being due in St George, I didn’t have much desire to video one of them given the trucks weren’t anything different or exciting, however I had to make an exception. One reason is outlined in the next paragraph, but the other reason was to film one of our own here on RU-vid, a bloke by the name of Mick, who featured in my last St George upload almost 8 years ago (Kogarah Recycling). Since then Mick climbed the ladder into a garbage run and was on the receiving end of a factory fresh Superior Pak Iveco unit destined for weekly rubbish pick-ups. I met up with him early on a Monday morning, initially attempting to capture some hopper footage (and failed miserably again), then shot some bin lifting action during the 2nd and 3rd loads between the suburbs of Bexley and Bardwell Valley. A key aspect of this capture was to show what these Superior Pak arms can do, with SL841’s hydraulics tweaked up to run extra swift and the arm capable of inverting bins irrespective of the slide being extended. To highlight this enhanced operating ability, I was determined to get clips in a number of these parked out straight streets where beam reach is a necessary evil. As much as the truck is being put through its paces, I reckon it’s great entertainment watching Mick have a solid crack at this first shift for the week =]
Another point I’ll touch on is that this past LGA is 1 of the 3 final councils in Sydney that adopt the 2-bin-system, a method of domestic waste collection once widespread nationwide and now something on the way out of existence. Rockdale back in 2008 introduced new 240L MGBs and appropriately named them “garbage and organics recovery bins” - they were to capture mixed household rubbish, food waste and garden refuse to be processed at an AWT facility. For quite some time all these loads were landfilled, otherwise portions were directed to AWT sites for resource recovery... today Veolia receives this waste material, but I’m not sure how much of it runs through their Woodlawn MBT. Soon enough this former council area will see the roll out of new green lidded organics bins to match the rest of the region, in line with the industry standard and government mandates. What I importantly wanted to capture here was that setting of only the garbage 240Ls presented for collection, as opposed to recycle week with a pair of yellow + red lid bins out from each property, which is just an ordinary sight.
Also be sure to watch this in the 720p setting for better picture quality!
I hope you viewers enjoy the episode!
26 окт 2023
