Something a little different. I've always thought about doing a route-based video like this but I've never found it very practical so it never happened. However, a little while ago I began to accumulate random bits and pieces of video of this truck so I decided to go ahead and try it. Let me know what you guys think, if it seems popular I may do something similar in the future.
Anyways, the city's route 22 here is a largely-residential yardwaste route (although technically it does have a bit of commercial too). Assigned to this route is truck 20407, a 2016 CNG Crane Carrier LET2 with a 24 cubic yard Dadee Scorpion body, one of the first 3 Scorpion ASLs to be purchased for Southern California. This is one of two full, 5-day yardwaste routes in the city, but they also have a third route on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and an extra half route on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Even in the 8.4-square mile City of Santa Monica each day's routes differ quite a bit, as summed up below.
Monday (00:05): Route 122 (the first number of the route dictates the day of the week, "1" being Monday, "2" being Tuesday, etc.) consists mainly of standard single-family residential homes in the Sunset Park and Pico neighborhoods of the city, but also has a few apartments and businesses on it too. It comes out to be about a load and a half I believe. Both the yard and dumpsite are technically located within the route providing for quick access to a break area and the dump.
Tuesday (04:08): Route 222 is the city's heaviest yardwaste route I believe, the only one occasionally requiring a third trip to dump. The massive houses worth tens of millions of dollars on this route pump out tons of organic material weekly, many houses with upwards of 3 or 4 carts. On the heaviest of days when the carts are really packed full (like the stop at 4:45) the truck will pack out and hit the scale with a solid 8 tons from only about 200 carts. Of all five routes this section of the video came out to be the longest by quite a bit, but I'm quite happy with how it came out (what I'd consider just about a perfect summary of the route).
Wednesday (11:52): Despite route 322 being huge geographically and requiring about 31 miles of driving (average between all days is about 24 if I remember correctly), the entire route comes out to less than a full load at the end of the day. Much of it is commercial and apartment areas with little to no greenery, and although food waste is technically accepted with yardwaste the carts are often just filled with trash. The whole route seems kinda pointless to be brutally honest; the little bit of material recovered from these areas doesn't seem like it's worth the resources required to actually collect it (especially given how much of it's just trash).
Thursday (14:57): Route 422 consists of pretty typical residential areas. His first load is pretty much entirely alleys and comes out to be over 350 carts with no signs of struggling from the truck. His second load comes out to a little under 250 carts I believe.
Friday (18:44): Finishing off the week in Santa Monica's iconic Ocean Park neighborhood, route 522 is a relatively light route consisting of smaller houses and apartments. During the winter he can typically pack the entire route into one load coming out to almost 400 carts. This route is pretty crazy with its older infrastructure and alleys that zig zag everywhere, leading to random carts here and there and a lot of "side stops" (carts on the street even when that block has an alley). He has this route down though and flies through it every week the exact same way swinging by everywhere he needs to and nowhere he doesn't. I can't imagine what it must be like for a sub driver to do this route, probably ends up with a ton of turnarounds.
That just about sums it up. Through all the time I've invested learning about the city's operation I found it quite interesting how generous they are with routes and drivers. They tend to finish around noon or 1 without moving all that quickly throughout the day and often a longer lunch break too. Their yard is pretty centrally located within the city meaning freeway driving to/from their routes is virtually never necessary, and they dump recycling at their yard and trash and greenwaste right across the street. To put that into perspective, this truck went into service almost two years ago and only has about 10k miles on it. Plus decent pay of about $31 an hour and all the city benefits, this ain't a bad place to go pick up some trash. A huge thank you to Eduardo "Lalo" Vasquez for his friendliness and abundance of information. Filmed throughout 2017 and early 2018