Garbage Truck Checkups Found 27% Failure Rate

Surprise inspections of Los Angeles garbage trucks over a nine-month period discovered that an average of 27% of the vehicles rolled out onto the streets with mechanical problems that should have kept them in the shop, according to documents released late Friday.

And in separate documents, trash truck drivers are accused of often abusing their expensive vehicles--damaging the body or drive-shafts, letting the oil get too low, overstuffing trash compactors and driving on slick tires--although they rarely faced discipline.

Despite having these records last year, city bureaucrats said nothing about the high failure rate or potential abuse in a series of public meetings last month after a trash truck’s subsequent malfunction caused an accident that killed two 8-year-old boys. The situation triggered outrage Friday among top officials at City Hall.

“Seeing these kinds of reports sends up an immediate red flag, not only about the efficiency of our trash collection, but also about public safety,” Councilman Marvin Braude said, vowing to investigate the reports more fully in a committee hearing Jan. 22.

“These reports are a real cause for concern because they call into question how safe the city’s refuse trucks are, how likely they might be to break down or be involved in accidents and how great the taxpayers’ financial liability might be as a result,” Braude added. “It is crucial that the City Council make sure that the Bureau of Sanitation and its drivers are not placing speed or reliability of service ahead of public safety and taxpayer liability.”

The city is facing more than $65 million in legal claims from the families of the victims of the Dec. 6 crash, in which a hydraulic ram burst through the steel side of a truck and sliced into an oncoming school bus.

Since the accident, city officials have revealed two previous instances of similar malfunctions in the fleet, though no alarm was raised, and mechanics have removed, reinforced or replaced the compacting mechanisms on hundreds of trucks since an expert concluded that the problem was “endemic” in design and could easily occur again.

But the documents released Friday from the General Services and Sanitation departments are the first to focus blame on the drivers, accusing them of skimping on required daily inspections and having a cavalier attitude about their equipment.

Union spokeswoman Julie Butcher, who represents both drivers and mechanics, was mystified by the reports’ findings.

“I want to know how they figure out how to blame the worker,” Butcher said. Told of the alleged driver abuse, she said: “Oh, please.”

Butcher accused the city of “trying to blame somebody” rather than recognizing that garbage trucks are high-maintenance vehicles.

A series of memos from General Services to the Refuse Collection Division of the Bureau of Sanitation shows that from November 1994 to August 1995 more than 30% of the trucks failed surprise inspections in four of the nine months, with a high of 36% failure in March. The best rate was in August, when only 15% of the trucks failed.

“As we are all aware, the above defects should have been found during the operator’s pre-trip inspection, should have been written up at the end of the previous shift, could have resulted in a breakdown on the route and would have put the vehicles out of service if found during a [California Highway Patrol] inspection,” one document states.

A more detailed breakdown shows that none of the 20 trucks inspected at the West Los Angeles yard Aug. 10 failed, while 13 of 27 trucks (48%) inspected Aug. 1 at the South-Central yard did not pass muster. Another inspection at South-Central on Aug. 31 showed seven of 27 trucks (26%) failing.

Meanwhile, 33% of the trucks inspected Aug. 24 at the East Valley yard and 32% of those checked Aug. 8 at the North-Central facility had problems that should have sent them to the shop for repair. In the Harbor district, an inspection July 8 found no failures, but when inspectors returned July 26, 40% of the trucks checked failed.

Councilman Richard Alarcon, who chairs the Public Works Committee, defended the drivers.

“The report did not have any analysis. It was just a listing of incidents,” he said. “The way it was presented to me was with a presumption that it was the truck drivers’ fault. I don’t make that presumption.”