Lake Macquarie Recycling

A couple of weeks ago I jumped on the freeway and headed north after work one morning. The idea of the daytrip was to visit some councils in the Hunter area, and although I wasn't as successful as I hoped I'd be, I was lucky enough to get 2 of the old recycling trucks on the job in Lake Macquarie. I'd been through the service area in the morning, but all I found was empty garbage bins, full recycling bins and no trucks. I returned early in the afternoon, circling a number of areas for a 3rd time and I happily found the big former Concord truck nearing the end of the run. After videoing that one, I crossed into the neighbouring area and turned up at the same time as one of the single-axles. The truck in this video is #9113, seen here working towards the end of a Wednesday shift in the suburb of Fassifern. A big thanks to the driver, I hope he enjoys the footage along with everyone else. For those of you unaware, there are three councils involved in a regional recycling contract known as HRR (Hunter Resource Recovery). The contract has been going since 1997 and is due to renew in July next year, with Singleton becoming the fourth member council and Solo Resource Recovery continuing to handle the job. The original service involved a split bin to seperate the paper from bottles, but things went co-mingled just recently. When I was there I spotted a team of 3 removing a certain part from all the yellow-lidded 240Ls, which is why you may notice some bins in the video have the divider and others don't. All of these old trucks are still found working in Lake Macquarie, however there are four newer machines which were put into operation a few years ago to work under Cessnock and Maitland. I have a video titled "Maitland Recycling (SCRAP System)" which gives you a look at one of these newer trucks collecting the split bins with the water jet in proper use. Other than that, I am yet to upload two more videos featuring current HRR trucks and may return for another of these old single-axles before the contract ends. Otherwise I should be back there for the new fleet in 2013.