Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The new Garfield garbage truck remains in Spokane being retrofitted for use in the town’s garbage route.
The 2002 Mack truck, which the town bought used from the community of West Valley, Utah, in December, has a mechanical arm that operates a device called a Curotto-Can from the inside.
The total cost of the new purchase was $63,500.
The truck needed to be retrofitted in order to operate it. The Curotto-Can, which came with the truck when Garfield bought it, was originally installed on another Utah truck, thus the need for the adjustments to the Garfield truck’s electronics.
The town’s new garbage truck has been at Western Systems in Spokane since late December when previous Mayor Jarrod Pfaff, city councilman Tim Southern and Public Works Superintendent Robby Johnson drove it from Utah.
Johnson has been monitoring the progress as Western Systems’ has had delays because of issues with a parts supplier.
Mayor Ray McCown, who took over in January, suggests the previous truck still had a lot of use.
“I’m not in favor of a new, old garbage truck. We’ve got a perfectly good garbage truck already,” he said. “It just needed a few repairs. That’s what I think.”
The repairs he refers to are a new clutch and a new can/dumpster area in back.
Noting the length of the garbage route in Garfield, McCown suggested the mileage and stress being put on the old truck was minimal.
“They can’t put a hundred miles a week on it,” he said.
The Curotto-Can device is made so that a garbage route can be done by one person, since the arm of the truck can pick up cans and other items and dump them without another worker.
McCown, however, says that if there’s an extra garbage bag outside of a can or dumpster, an errant box or an old chair, for example, the driver may have to get out of the truck.
Nonetheless, McCown estimates the city’s new truck will arrive in Garfield in the next week or two.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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