New Trash Trucks Do Dirty Work : Sanitation: High-tech vehicles allow drivers to pick up garbage without getting out of the cab. Mechanical arms lift special refuse canisters.

For 16 years, Albert Drew has huffed and puffed away as a Los Angeles City garbage man, jumping in and out of his truck countless times each day to hoist and empty the trash cans that line East Valley streets.

In a couple of weeks, Drew expects to do his job sitting down.

That’s because he will be behind the wheel of one of the city’s spanking new, high-tech garbage trucks.

Like a teen-ager playing a video game, he will use a joystick mounted in the cab to operate hydraulic arms that automatically lift the garbage cans and dump them into the truck.

“I love it,” Drew said the other day as he learned how to use the joystick while picking up trash in a South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood. “I wish we had it 20 or 30 years ago.”

“I think it will be a whole lot better. I’m going to go home less tired,” said another garbage man, Kenneth Henderson, who was practicing a few streets away.

As the city moves forward with the largest curbside recycling and automated refuse-collection program in the country, city officials and environmentalists are not the only ones applauding.

So are the trash collectors.

To hear some of the 700 or so full-time trash collectors tell it, the automated trucks will change their job from one demanding a strong back to one demanding good hand-eye coordination to operate the joystick.

The days when sprained backs, bruised shoulders and aching muscles were a common occupational hazard appear numbered as the city embarks on a plan to train residents to put their garbage in canisters that can be lifted by the mechanical arms.

“I view this really as a blessing,” said Emanuel Lagemann, 51, a former trash collector who now supervises garbage crews. “I don’t see any injuries in the future. This truck does everything.”

Sanitation officials agree with the trash collectors.

The automated trucks, they say, should not only make workers more efficient, but also result in fewer of them getting hurt.

That not only means longer careers, but potential savings of millions of dollars a year in workers’ compensation claims filed against the city.

The system will mean a trash collector “can extend his work life until retirement without fear of a major breakdown of the skeletal system,” said William Knapp, head of the refuse collection and disposal division for the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.

Beginning Monday, an automated truck will begin operating in the Sunland and Lake View Terrace communities.

The vehicle will operate five days a week and pick up trash at about 600 residences each day.

At each household, the truck’s hydraulic arms will be used to hoist and dump two specially designed 60-gallon containers that have been distributed free.

Sanitation officials said more automated trucks will be put into service in coming weeks in other Valley neighborhoods.

By 1993, the automated vehicles are expected to be in operation citywide and serve an estimated 720,000 households, they said.

The use of automated garbage trucks is not new, and an increasing number of cities each year are turning to the vehicles.

In Beverly Hills, city officials decided to begin using the trucks about a decade ago, primarily to cut down on workers’ compensation claims, said Ed Cassling, the city’s acting sanitation director.

While precise figures were not available, he estimated that injuries to trash collectors have decreased by half since the city began using automated trash trucks.

In Glendale, automated trucks are used on two of the city’s 31 trash routes, and the city soon plans to use the vehicles on four more routes, according to Lino Torres, the city’s integrated waste administrator.

Last year, there were about 30 injuries to trash collectors, and the city hopes to significantly reduce that number as more automated trucks are put into service.

Torres said the trucks that Glendale has ordered cost about $114,000--$16,000 more than a regular truck--and come equipped with air-conditioning, a radio and a closed-circuit television that allows the driver to see what is behind him.

“Everybody is going in this direction because of the high productivity and fewer accidents and injuries,” Torres said. “We have taken a job that is dangerous where people get hurt . . . and we have changed all of that to sitting in a cab that is air-conditioned and with music.”

“You could do this job in a suit and not get dirty,” he said.

Los Angeles sanitation officials said the city began using the automated trucks in 1989 as part of a pilot program in South-Central Los Angeles.

Because the automated trucks are more efficient, only five trucks instead of the usual 11 were assigned to pick up trash at 15,000 residences where the specially designed garbage bins were distributed, according to Knapp.

Knapp said the city initially will purchase 47 of the automated trucks at $130,000 apiece.

About 250 of the city’s conventional trash trucks can be converted for about $30,000 each, he said.

If the pilot program is any indication, worker injuries should decrease significantly as the automated trucks become more prevalent, Knapp said.

There are about 550 injuries a year among trash collectors, and on average, each injury costs the city $3,000 in workers’ compensation claims.

Only one minor injury has been reported among workers participating in the pilot program.

Knapp estimated that the city could save at least $1 million a year in workers’ compensation claims once the automated trucks are in operation citywide.

Besides saving the city money, Knapp said the trucks should make life easier for trash collectors.

The trucks should also open up the position to others, including females, who previously could not perform the job because of physical demands. Currently, only one woman serves as a trash collector for the city of Los Angeles.

“We can look at the handicapped (and) women,” Knapp said. “It will lower the physical barriers, obviously.”

Lagemann said most trash collectors have little trouble learning how to use the joystick, although the younger ones seem to catch on a little quicker.

To “the younger guys, it’s just like a video game,” he said.

That was the case with 30-year-old Henderson, who after only an hour’s practice was having little trouble maneuvering trash cans into place with the joystick.

In fact, Henderson appeared to be having a good time.

“The truck is brand, spankin’ new, everything is brand, spankin’ new,” he said. “It’s pretty enjoyable.”

As he watched Henderson, Lagemann, 51, lamented the fact that the automated trucks did not exist more than 30 years ago when he first became a garbage man.

He recalled hoisting 55-gallon oil drums full of rubbish into his truck. “Where was this when I was loading trash?” he asked.

“Who knows?” he said a few minutes later. “In the next 20 years, you may hit (the garbage) with a laser and it is going to disappear or dissipate.”