Ku-ring-gai Green Waste

Looking back, it’s coming up to 16 years since I posted a full video of one of these trucks, so I guess I’m due to finally share my last piece of older Ku-ring-gai footage. A few years ago I uploaded a current green waste collection truck from this council, which at this point is actually not far from being switched over for a new Volvo! In this upload we see what was around before the modern SPAK Iveco side loaders came into the picture, being 1 of 3 MJE Iveco side arms that were dedicated to fortnightly garden waste pick-ups. This trio was introduced into the council by Collex in late 2004 as part of a new contract, which was when the existing 1980s Rapid Rail bins being used for garden vegetation were replaced with fresh 360L Schaefers. These trucks battled the green waste job in Ku-ring-gai for over 10 years before being relieved of duty by Veolia during 2017.

Long ago when I was doing my earliest YouTube videos, I showed off truck 408 multiple times from my original school holiday visits to the Ku-ring-gai area. On this occasion I bring to you different unit 407, which I located on a Wednesday morning in late March 2016, working in a quiet western pocket of Killara and Lindfield. I’ll mention some years earlier this truck was involved in a rollover incident right in the vicinity of where I took this footage – you may notice it’s more white in colour compared to the other Collex siblings. Everything else about it remains on point as a Ku-ring-gai greens truck but, especially the neat heavy duty grabbers necessary for these bigger bins. They also had the large 29m bodies to provide good capacity for the bushy and bulky material collected in the region, with special blades welded atop the paddles to assist in sweeping the vegetation out of the hopper.

NorthShoreGarbo took a video of this same truck some years back, so there is further footage to see of it if you can’t get enough. I don’t believe anything was ever captured of the third green waste truck but. There’s plenty to see of the current Ku-ring-gai side loading services on YouTube, but this older action is its own kind of special and rare. It’s just cool hearing the old black Cummins engine chugging along, and paired up with the MkIV/ACCO combo, it makes for a refreshing sound and sight compared to what’s out there now. On this same morning a 22m rig was also around doing garbage, but I didn’t commit to catching it at the time and sadly never achieved further footage of the weekly rubbish run during the old fleet days. Time will tell if I bother proceeding to get one of the young Volvos on video in future. Lastly, a massive thanks to the professional driver operator for being all good with me following along.