As single stream recycling continues to become the method-of-choice for curbside recycling collection across America, glass has quickly stood out as being the peskiest commodity to handle during the sorting process. As it is often broken into fine shards during compaction in a refuse truck, it is often rendered unsortable and useless, and can even contaminate other commodities by the time it reaches a sorting facility. To combat this issue and to get the highest value out of glass, many recycling haulers around the Pacific Northwest choose to segregate glass from the other recyclable commodities. Many of these haulers have creatively customized their trucks to be able to collect co-mingled recyclables as well as glass with the same truck, while keeping the two streams separate. A fine example of one of these unique custom jobs is this Lodal EVO MAG-20 manual side loader, which has been equipped with a custom "recycler box", built by A.A. Welding of Vancouver, WA, to separately contain glass. This "recycler box" features a trough-loading system, reminiscent in design and function to that of the ADR Advance curb-sort recyclers seen throughout the west coast during the 1990's. The glass "recycler box" and trough fit perfectly between the the cab and hopper of the Lodal MAG-20, leaving the rest of the truck unaltered for the easy collection of co-mingled metals, plastics, paper, and cardboard. Aside from the custom addition for glass recycling, the Lodal EVO is in itself a unique truck. Rather than featuring a separate cab, chassis, and body, this entire truck is one fully integrated unit, allowing for a lower loading height, shorter wheelbase, and fewer overall parts.
All-in-all, this is a very unique truck, and it was a lot of fun to be able to watch it in action! I hope you all enjoy it as well!
I would like to take a moment to extend a huge thanks to the crew for allowing me to shoot some video of their truck!
