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Refuse Collecting Vehicles

  • Thread starter Thread starter O.C.
  • Start date Start date
If you want to see some post-war Birmingham bullnose electric refuse vehicles go to the BBC iPlayer "The Secret Life of Rubbish"episode 1 at about the 13.40 minutes point. Here's the link. It also describes Birmingham's approach to salvage and recycling. Viv.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p48tt
 
Here in Spain we have refuse collected every night, including Sundays. One man operated with a hoist on truck that picks community bins up to empty. Easy.
 
sheldontony said:
Here in Spain we have refuse collected every night, including Sundays. One man operated with a hoist on truck that picks community bins up to empty. Easy.
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Hi Tony, we lived in Murcia for six years so I know what you are talking about, I now have an apartment on Vista Bella Golf, not far from San Miguel de Salinas, are you in that area?
 
Hi Tony, we are going out to our apartment soon. We go to the Wednesday market and usually stop off a the little bar in the middle, perhaps you could look out for me, and have a drink.
 
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sheldontony said:
Here in Spain we have refuse collected every night, including Sundays. One man operated with a hoist on truck that picks community bins up to empty. Easy.
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I well remember the old electric Birmingham Refuse Lorries, but living on the boundary with Sutton, we were also treated to that council's small Shelvoake and Drewery units. However recently on holiday in Perth, Australia there was a collection every evening and on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day. In England, you just get rude notes about how your refuse is to be sorted and left for collection, especially since we have just gone to our fourth waste receptacle for food scraps.....of course these have to be carefully sorted, some can still go in the green vegetation wheelie bin (which we now pay to have emptied), but they must all be wrapped in old newspaper or biodegradable bags, so that the dustmen do not get their hands dirty...as Richard Littlejohns says you could not make it up.

Bob
 
enjoyed watching that mort...life on bins was certainly hard before the days of the automated lorries...mom and dad always gave the men a christmas box

lyn
 
Did you notice the dustman in the olden days used to go in your back garden carry the bin to the dust cart, take the bin back to your back garden and pick up any rubbish that they dropped. That was a fantasy film was it not, last Thursday I put out the green garden waste bin which we pay £36.00 a year for a fortnightly removal, it was still unemptied when I put out the grey wheelie non recyclable bin yesterday, which got emptied, tomorrow I shall sack up the greenery and take it to the tip myself, this morning I put out the small waste food bin, the blue box for glass, the grèen box for plastic and tins, the green newspaper plastic bag and the brown cardboard plastic bag. The only good thing you no longer have to tip them. Fancy the dustman actually moving your dustbin themselves. Living in Court Lane on the Birmingham/Sutton boundary actually was interesting, Birmingham collected in one of their green electric dust carts (I always said those electric vehicles would never catch on), Sutton used little brown outlined in gold Shelveoake and Drewery refuse carts, quite old fashioned looking.
Bob
 
cant fault the back in the day binmen..they used to come down the entry and carry the bins and the oval ones on their shoulders that had the fire ashes in them empty them by hand into the wagon and then bring the bins back down the entry and place them in the back yard...thats what i call a good service and that is why they always got a christmas box off most people..these days except for hooking the bins onto the back of the wagons we have to do the job for them and more than once i have had to retrieve my bins from half way down the road or over the road....moan over

lyn
 
We also had the "pig bin" next to the dustbin but I can't remember if the usual dustmen collected that or was it someone else?
 
This film, Dustman's Day, narrated by Sid James, starts in London but goes on to show Birmingham men using their small tin baths to empty bins into and the introduction of the wheeled dollies to move the new-fangled dustbins with hinged lids, the foreunner of the 'wheelie bin'.
 
Spargone said:
This film, Dustman's Day, narrated by Sid James, starts in London but goes on to show Birmingham men using their small tin baths to empty bins into and the introduction of the wheeled dollies to move the new-fangled dustbins with hinged lids, the foreunner of the 'wheelie bin'.
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if its the same one posted a couple of weeks back on post 75 its well worth watching

lyn
 
Astoness said:
if its the same one posted a couple of weeks back on post 75 its well worth watching

lyn
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You are right! I've been busy writing up my dad's involvement with Rover cars and 'locked out' of Birmingham so not up to speed.
I did do a search before I posted, (General plea: please include titles of things, not just "I read a book.." to aid the searcher).
The film gives a false impression that both methods, bath and dolly, were used on the same round whereas it marked a big change of working. (Would I be right in thinking that this was the start of council-supplied bins, depriving the local ironmonger of some trade?)
 
Spargone said:
You are right! I've been busy writing up my dad's involvement with Rover cars and 'locked out' of Birmingham so not up to speed.
I did do a search before I posted, (General plea: please include titles of things, not just "I read a book.." to aid the searcher).
The film gives a false impression that both methods, bath and dolly, were used on the same round whereas it marked a big change of working. (Would I be right in thinking that this was the start of council-supplied bins, depriving the local ironmonger of some trade?)
Click to expand...
There is an interesting book, "Birmingham's Electric Dustcarts", written by Roger de Boer in 1990.
ISBN 0 905586-07-7.
PA739
 
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