Maybe you're considering taking on a fully automated residential route, but only have a fleet of front loaders. Or, perhaps you're bidding on a residential and commercial contract 50 miles away and have been dreading the thought of having to send two vehicles to do the job.

Devices offered by Romeoville, Ill.-based Perkins Manufacturing and Sonoma, Calif.-based The Curotto Can allow haulers to convert their commercial front loaders for use in fully automated residential collection.

The products attach to the head of a front loader and feature a collection can and a set of grabber arms. The arms lift residential carts and dump the waste into the open top of the collection can. When the can fills up, its contents are dumped into the truck itself, just as the waste from a commercial bin would be.

Although the devices aren't the right fit for everyone, they can permit haulers to use their trucks more efficiently, reduce contamination of recyclables and cut down on workers' compensation claims.

Tonnage and Efficiency

Henry County, Ga., was the eighth-fastest-growing county in the country from 2000 to 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It's also one of the five counties that make up CLM Sanitation's service area south of Atlanta. Needless to say, with 70 to 80 percent market share in the area, CLM has to service very dense routes.

For a while, the company used rear loaders, which could hold 16 tons of waste, for its residential routes, says Jason Becker, the company's CEO. But with an increasing subscriber base, it needed to improve efficiency. So, in December 2005, CLM Sanitation purchased an automated side-loader collection vehicle. Becker says that while they had no technical problems with the vehicle, it was only able to collect 12 tons before it had to be driven to a nearby landfill for dumping.

“When we changed from rear-load to side-load trucks, we had to cut the routes by 150 stops on average,” Becker says. “That was a struggle with the tight routes. The guy could pick it up, but couldn't hold it.”

So, in July 2007, Becker bought a Curotto Can. By attaching the product to a front loader, Becker was able to automate the routes while keeping tonnage up. He increased the amount of waste the driver could pick up before heading to a landfill to 16 tons without having to make any changes to the residential routes, aside from making them right-hand drive. CLM Sanitation now uses the device on six of its 40 routes.

“In today's industry, you have to use every advantage you can get through technology to keep your price point relevant in your market,” Becker says. For now, the company is only servicing residential accounts, but using the device, which can detach from a front loader in minutes, gives it the option of breaking into commercial accounts.

Dual Purpose

For Brad Brown, division manager for Allied Waste Services of Bullhead City, Ariz., the ability to collect residential and commercial waste with one truck has been a big draw of The Curotto Can and Perkins Manufacturing's Perkins Automated Container — also known as the PAC 1.0 — released in early 2007.

“I can't say one's better than the other,” says Brown of The Curotto Can and the PAC. “The drivers like different aspects of each one.”

Brown has one residential and commercial route that is 20 miles from his main service area. Rather than sending two trucks, he deploys a front loader equipped with either a Curotto Can or a PAC. The driver picks up waste from the 150 to 200 residential stops then detaches the device to service the approximately 100 commercial stops. Brown also is getting ready to start a job 60 miles away that includes 300 homes, as well as commercial stops.

Brown keeps a Curotto Can as a spare in case one of his other automated vehicles is out of service. “You don't want to have a $250,000 truck sitting around not doing anything,” he says.

Brown adds that he would consider using front loaders with fully automated attachments for the majority of his operations except for one main problem in his area: wind, which can blow the waste onto the streets before it reaches the hopper. “I'll probably always have a front loader with one of these types of containers because of areas that are spread out and have both residential and commercial stops,” he says. “But for contracted areas in the city limits, we'll go with an automated side loader because of the wind. Otherwise, we would look at the other system full time.”