Heil Environmental Industries has unveiled a drop frame side loader designed to enhance versatility, safety, and productivity while providing life cycle savings to the refuse fleet— the MultiTask SL.
“First, most side loaders have to be raised up in the air to dump their trash loads at a landfill – a process that typically takes 15 minutes to complete and is dangerous as tipping the body that high can make the vehicle unstable,” Mark Keller, Heil vp- engineering said during a press conference here at Waste Expo.
“With our new MultiTask, however, trash is ‘pushed’ out of the body laterally – the body never gets raised in order to dump trash. That not only speeds up the ejection cycle – taking 1 ½ to 2 minutes – but it makes it safer too.”
The MultiTask can be equipped with a Python automated arm that has a 9-foot reach and a 6- to 9-second trash can pickup-dump-replace cycle – and its speed is key to generating costs savings for refuse haulers, Keller said.
“Its speed saves 3 to 4 seconds per stop versus typical arm designs today – adding up to an hour saved per day on average,” he said. “That translates into $15,000 in annual cost savings just from the arm cycle time alone.”
Heil also reduced the engine power needed to operate its MultiTask’s hydraulic system, saving about a gallon of fuel per hour of operation, Keller added: “That can save the typical trash truck $250 per month in fuel.”
Dan Rosen, Heil’s director of product management, said those savings in time and fuel directly translates into lower life cycle costs for a trash truck fleet.
“It’s all about providing a product that makes the trash truck operator and mechanic happy, while giving the fleet a more productive product with a lower cost of ownership,” he explained. “That’s the goal.”
