Hi - my name's Alan. I found this site sometime in the last week or two while doing some research and got completely sidetracked reading all the info and the posts. I realize now that I know very little about the industry and very little about my own equipment, other than the day to day operation and maintenance of it - especially the history of it.
I own a small company with a couple trucks,a couple contracts, a couple of employees and we are out in a small rural area of Manitoba and had no idea just how huge the industry was. We are celebrating this week - 12 years of business and it's been 12 years of highs and lows. We are just digging ourselves out of yet another low and the past month has been insane but things are looking up.
When we bought the business it came with two trucks and the remaining time of a contract for a small resort town that triples in population (and garbage) over the summer months. A couple years later we added another truck and a second contract for the rural part of a larger municipality running back country roads 2 days/week.
Our original trucks are a '78 Ford F700 with a 15yrd Leach packer and a '79 Ford F700 with a 16yrd Leach packer. I'd guess the ages of the packers to be about the same as the trucks. It wasnt' until I started reading this site that I really started looking into what exactly we had. I dug through the box of manuals/books that came with the trucks and I have operators manuals/parts manuals/flowcharts etc for a T3 Sanicruiser, 2R-Packmaster, S-II Packmaster and Standard Packmaster. This morning I found a sheet of paper stapled into the Standard Packmaster owners manual --- the original delivery report for the 16yrd packer dated 26/5/77 from Fer-Marc Equipment out of Regina Saskatchewan. A little more history uncovered.
I do know that since August '95, at least one of the Packmasters has been on the road and in service at all times (we alternated between the two - when one truck needed repair or manitenance we'd pull it off the route and switch to the other truck for awhile) which was probably the case with the previous owner. The last safety inspection sticker on the 16yrd is dated '04 and the truck has been parked since then and has been used as a parts source to keep the older truck/packer on the go. Up until last week, the 15yrd packer was in service 3 days a week but unfortunately the old Ford has come to the end of it's life. We knew it was coming and that's how I ended up here at ClassicRefuseTrucks while searching the net for new(er) equipment. The search for newer used equipment - especially in Canada has proven to be very difficult. We finally decided that for lack of finding anything suitable to buy as a complete unit, we would find a cab/chasis to transfer the Packmaster over to. It wasn't really a tough decision...until I found CRT. Now I feel like I'm doing something wrong by not keeping the old truck intact - but business is business and without a packer my business is in deep trouble so that is the plan. We are in the process of purchasing an '04 International and the Ford was towed yesterday to the garage where the transfer will take place. I'll try and get some good pics to doccument the event.
Oh and I can't forget to tell you about my other truck. The little workhorse of our business - a 1ton with a little 8yrd Wittke Burro packing unit that right now is working 16hour days doing the work of both trucks while we scramble to get the Packmaster back up and running. The Burro is sweet little set up that I honestly know nothing about other than the day to day use of. I have no manuals or info on this set up but boy does it get attention. I've been asked by a few people including a larger Canadian company for information about it. Wish I had it to give but we bought it from a small municipality and they didn't have any info on it either and i can't find anything about it online. Anyway it's a tough little truck and I'll get some pics and hopefully video of it in the near future once things settle down around here.
Alan Dann
wittke burro/leach packmaster owner-operator
