HOPPER ACTION - Paddle Packing Recycling

Courtesy of my employment at Auburn Council, here is another hopper video I have to bring to all my viewers! My last packer action from a side loader was of two pendulums thrown up earlier this year and before that was a massive paddle video posted well over 2 years ago. For the new share I’m uploading more paddle entertainment, this time featuring comingled recycling aka single stream recycling. The featured truck is a very familiar vehicle, being an Iveco ACCO, with the signature note of the Cummins engine billowing out of the exhaust pipe beside the camera. The MacDonald Johnston body is also a well known product, with a refuse model hopper and standard paddle appearing in this movie. Once again I achieved this hopper video with my trusty Gorillapod, sitting over a hopper edge and secured with two legs wrapped around the front beacon guard.

As is very evident at the beginning, I recorded this with an empty truck, straight back at the run after tipping a load of garbage. The recycling is smoothly pushed through the unfilled apertures without any effort whatsoever, as is generally the case with any material in any empty compactor. Although once the body on these smaller refuse models becomes loaded with recycling, this size paddle can struggle a great deal feeding incoming material. Once you’ve thrown 200-250 bins on these trucks, large cardboard can protrude out of the body holes, which creates a bridging effect and stops bin contents from falling right down into the hopper bowl. The smaller height paddle really isn’t best choice when 240Ls are being emptied, as it isn’t fast enough at clearing recycling and can’t always easily grab onto bulkier materials. I hated doing units and townhouses, because I’d inevitably climb up multiple times to push cardboard into the path of the paddle or would have to sit and wait for an overflowing hopper to be swept.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous hopper videos, I’ve had many problems with the camera automatically cancelling recording due to some kind of sensitivity towards concentrated sound. There have been a number of times in the past where the camera captures only a couple of minutes of footage or even nothing when set-up right near the exhaust. I still haven’t figured out what does and doesn’t affect the camera but, because I achieved a 25min clip one time and on this occasion I was left with an almost non-stop 14min file... but I’m not complaining considering the successes I’ve been blessed with! So I wasn’t sure if this video would turn out successful or not, but I climbed up three times to check on the camera and it had stopped once, but I got it going again until it stopped a second time, at which point I was satisfied with what it did save for me. Anyway enough rambling, now go ahead and watch the hopper action my legend of a camera recorded =]