City considers automating trash pickup system with ‘the grabber’

LACONIA — Jeff Provencal likes the trash truck he was driving Friday morning in Franklin.

He uses an automated, mechanical, grabber arm to pick up two-wheeled garbage carts, hoist them in the air, dump them in the truck and put them back on the ground.

This is much preferable to the old system in which workers picked up garbage cans by hand, said Provencal, 43, an employee of Pinard Waste Systems.

“This is easier on the back, you don’t get your hands dirty, it’s easier all the way around,” he said.

Laconia Public Works Director Wes Anderson is looking into establishing automated trash pickup locally.

“What the truck does is come up one side of the street and down another,” he said. “It takes eight seconds to dump a can. It’s the safest and most efficient way.”

Since the automated system doesn’t require as many employees, a contractor should be able to give the city a better price for providing the service than the present system. The city would incur an initial cost of about $500,000 to buy the necessary trash carts.

Residents would be given one for trash and one for recycling.

“Some people who don’t recycle now, this will be an opportunity for them to do so,” Anderson said.

“Many municipalities have gone to the automated system. We’ve seen it over the last 10 to 15 years.

“We will be going around and trying to determine on various streets in the city, how many cans are needed and we will build a route map.”

Anderson will also be doing a cost analysis to see how much money the city could save, balanced against the cost of the initial investment and bond financing over time.

With less hands-on work, worker compensation claims should decrease, there is less city liability, productivity increases and trash is picked up faster.

Information gathered by Anderson could go into a request to trash haulers for proposals to create an automated garbage collection system in Laconia. Any changeover would be subject to City Council approval and likely wouldn’t occur before 2022 to allow time for the analysis, the request for proposal process and for the current contractual arrangements to conclude.

Brian Sullivan, the municipal services director in Franklin, said that in addition to cost savings, there is another advantage to the automated system.

“It cleaned up the city,” he said. “It eliminated the situation where rodents, vermin, crows were getting into the trash and breaking open bags. Crows know the trash routes.”

The large two-wheeled carts can also have somewhat of a neater appearance than old-style, smaller cans, which sometimes are overflowing when they are brought to the curb.

In Franklin, the carts must be wheeled to the curb no earlier than 12 hours before pick up and no later than 6:45 a.m. on collection days.

If multiple containers are put out, they need to be a few feet from one another and several feet away from objects such as mailboxes and fences. The apron or very end of a driveway are a good place to put them (they must be within 4 feet of the roadway).

They are not to be placed under low-hanging branches. The lid must open from the road side, and the handle should face the house.

Ice and snow must be cleared from an area of the curbside for containers in the winter.

Franklin has door-hanging cards to advise residents if they are not following the rules.