Opis
Once a year, Mission Trail's fleet of vintage rear loaders take to the streets of Santa Clara for their crazy annual cleanup campaign. The whole city takes a month to cover, with the city being broken up into four zones that are each assigned a full week. Much of the city is actually covered by third party contractors using semis and end dump trailers, while the rear loaders handle cul de sacs and other tight areas. These trucks have quite the history behind them, as the Volvo chassis formerly carried dual-compartment McNeilus Autoreaches and Heil 7000s serving as the residential fleet for the city. Years ago when they updated the fleet and transitioned to CNG, those bodies were replaced with these 1980s rear loaders to serve as the cleanup trucks. The majority of the rear loaders are EZ Pack Goliaths, however there are three Dempster Route Kings as well, only one of which was running the day we went (future video to come). Swing link rear loaders are far from ideal to handle bulky items, and I found the skid steer loaders to be not be particularly efficient either although they get the job done given the once-a-year status of the cleanup operation. I still couldn't help but think it would be awesome to see Greenwaste's fleet of Leach 2RIIIs and Tink claw loaders from neighboring San Jose tackle this cleanup in an alternate universe, basically the perfect equipment for this application. Regardless, a truck of this vintage is a sight to see especially in California, not to mention an entire fleet of them. We were a bit baffled as to how these trucks went unfilmed for so long, but we were happy to make the trip up from SoCal to make it happen.