No off-the-shelf garbage truck for New York: the government designed one in 10 months
Because there was no automated side-loading truck suitable for New York streets, copying the European solution required waiting five years, so the New York City Sanitation Department simply designed one itself—in just 10 months.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
No back alleys in Manhattan isn't culture—it's the legacy of 1811's street grid
Manhattan's 1811 street grid made no room for back alleys, a fundamental difference from cities like Chicago that hide garbage in them. During the 1968 sanitation workers' strike, garbage piled up faster than metal bins could hold, so Mayor Lindsay's ‘Black Garbage Bag Committee’ adopted the newly invented plastic garbage bag—ostensibly to ‘prevent rats,’ though this claim was soon disproven but persisted for half a century.
— Joshua GoodmanConverting garbage weight to volume proved harder than expected
For over a century, the sanitation department's core metric was garbage weight, but designing street containers required volume data. The team measured garbage pile volumes block by block across all 70,000 city blocks and built conversion formulas, while accounting for fire hydrants, curb ramps, and tree canopy heights. Goodman emphasized that directly ‘copying Barcelona or Amsterdam’ was wrong—New York had to measure everything again from scratch.
— Joshua GoodmanBuilding size determines container type, rejecting Europe's shared model
Shared street containers common in Europe were rejected because New York's commercial garbage collection is a paid private service, and businesses would ‘piggyback’ on shared bins. The final system stratified by building size: 1–9 units got wheeled containers; buildings with 31+ units received their own ‘Empire bin’; mid-size buildings with 10–30 units could choose. Containers stayed tied to specific buildings, which also eliminated the constant ‘why my building's corner but not yours?’ dispute.
— Joshua GoodmanNorth America had never built street containerization; New York designed its own truck
The team found no commercially available automated side-loading trucks suited to residential New York streets—the only reference model was Philadelphia's port version, whose noise was so loud it would be ‘absurd to run down your street.’ Truck industry experts said designing from scratch would take five years. The sanitation department couldn't wait, so they assembled their own: European cab, Mack chassis, plus a third-party firm bridging two electronic systems. Ten months later, the prototype was ready; roughly 20 now run in West Harlem.
— Joshua GoodmanParking spot loss shrank from 150,000 to 30,000 through deeper analysis
The 2022 ‘Future of Garbage’ report initially estimated containerization might consume up to 150,000 parking spots (out of 3 million citywide). As implementation details matured, including provisions for smaller buildings to share containers, the team recalculated and got about 30,000. Early worries that garbage bins would consume all New York parking largely came from rough assumptions, not fieldwork.
— Joshua GoodmanHalf of sanitation workers' injuries stem from twisting while tossing garbage bags
Among the city's 6,500 sanitation workers, roughly half of on-the-job injuries are sprains and strains from tossing garbage bags. Mechanized side-loading could cut these injuries sharply. Goodman also mentioned a new problem: needle-stick injuries among sanitation workers are rising, which the team links to the surge in GLP-1 weight-loss injections bought online—users throw needles straight into garbage bags without reading disposal instructions.
— Joshua GoodmanCleanliness comes from clear ownership, not campaigns
Goodman drew on planner Oscar Newman's 1970s ‘Defensible Space’ theory: controlling for income, age, and other variables, public housing still had higher crime rates because design made many spaces feel like ‘nobody's place.’ The sanitation department applied this logic to cleanliness—dedicated rather than shared ‘Empire bins,’ expanded owner sidewalk-sweeping duties to 18 inches, stronger enforcement against illegal parking. The core principle: leave no corner where people think ‘dirt isn't my responsibility.’
— Joshua GoodmanAll 59 district zones need containerization within five years
Containerization currently covers only West Harlem (launched June 2025) and Brooklyn Heights soon to launch. The mayor committed funding through 2031 to containerize all 59 community districts. The remaining 57 are scheduled to roll out over roughly five years as new trucks come off the line. Goodman noted the team initially feared strong resident backlash over parking losses, but in practice ‘very few got truly angry’—most opposition stayed theoretical.
— Joshua GoodmanIn their own words · checked verbatim
Just as Sisyphus faced the boulder again each day, we pick up 24 million pounds today.
Joshua Goodman4:04
In New York City, the only non-renewable resource is public space. There is a finite amount of room. And so when the streets were laid out in the 1811 master plan, The city was built without alleyways.
Joshua Goodman8:07
the plastics industry pushed them as rodent resistant, which obviously we know they're not.
Joshua Goodman9:08
So we talked to some truck industry experts and heard that it would probably take about five years to design a truck from scratch. You can't just import the ones from Europe. There's different emission standards. We were not going to wait five years for that.
Joshua Goodman27:17
One thing we've seen a big increase is being poked by needles. We assume it's from an increase in GLP-1 usage with people.
Joshua Goodman32:17
specifically that there were significant parts of many urban public housing developments that didn't feel like they belonged to anyone.
Joshua Goodman38:26
Our trash is special in some ways. You know, our bags are a beautiful part of our landscape. And of course they're not.
Joshua Goodman43:31
Figures
| Daily garbage, recycling, and compost processed | 24 million pounds | 4:04 |
| Population served | 8.5 million | 7:06 |
| Community districts citywide | 59 | 24:16 |
| Mayor's containerization deadline | 2031 | 24:16 |
| ASL trucks deployed; planned total | About 20; about 2,300 | 28:17 |
Glossary
- Empire bin
- A large street container assigned exclusively to buildings with 31+ units.
- ASL truck
- An automated side-loading truck with a mechanical arm that tips over street containers.
- Defensible Space
- A theory proposing that design giving clear ownership of every space reduces crime and disorder.
How to listen
Entrepreneurs, engineers, and policy researchers focused on urban governance, engineering public services, and infrastructure data analysis.
Skip the opening banter about Sisyphus and Camus's philosophy; it doesn't affect the operational details that follow.