5th. grade, a new kid moved into the neighborhood, Mike Salerno, an Italian from Chicago. Italians were showing up in Berwyn (IL) often, fleeing the old decrepit Chicago Taylor Street areas. Mike boasted his dad drove a "Packmaster" garbage truck, as though this was truly an achievement. Packmaster remains in my mind since, and tonight I did a search. Here is a short pictorial history of the Packmaster. From "Garbagemanday.org": Leach Garbage Getter Leachs first refuse body was the Garbage Getter built from 1932 to 1949. The refuse was loaded into the rear hopper and the hopper is raised over the body and emptied into the body. This Garbage Getter was restored by Leach as a promotion. Leach Packmaster Leach introduced the Packmaster in 1950. Early models of the Packmaster tipped like a tipper body until an ejector plact was introduced. Above is an 1984 model. Leach Packmaster 2-R Leach introduced the 2-R in 1959 and was made until 1985. The leach Packmaster 2-R was the first compactor to have the slide sweep packing plate cycle invented by Cyril R Gollnick of Leach USA. His invention revolutioned the waste compactor industry and was copied by most compactor truck companies. The leach was tested in the 1960s by the inventer to show its strenght. It was capable of crushing an entire Volkswagen Beetle car into the body! Leach broadened their product line for 1976 with an all-new front loader, the 2-F. This latest creation of engineer Cyril Gollnick was quite conventional in many ways; a full-pack/full-eject packer body with a three-stage telescopic cylinder, hydraulic hopper doors and a bustle tailgate for increased capacity. Then they added an automatic 'parallelogram' self-leveling fork system very similar to Milton Clar's 1962 E-Z Pack. The system used a pair of bell cranks to which the fork cylinders were mounted. The cranks were actuated by twin links on each lift arm, the rearmost on each side being pivotally attached to the packer body, to impart mechanical movement of the forks as the lift arms were raised. Lift arms had a capacity of 9,000 pounds, and buyers had a choice of a 25 or 31 cubic yard body, which was later joined by a 35 yard model. The 2-F was built through 1990, when it was replaced by the FL-104 series. These things crush virtually everything put into them, compacting a huge amount of individual pieces of refuse into a fairly small, carry-able bundle, very heavy though, and when they disgorge their load, watch out! Mike may have been right on with being proud of the old man! Frank
Wow ! Looks just like our rubbish trucks ! Last week they didn't attach the large metal bin correctly and the truck swallowed it