TRUCKS
Leading the Charge Mack set to deliver first electric refuse truck By James Menzies
M
ack Trucks has taken the wraps of the industry’s first fully electric refuse truck to be put into service, a Mack LR Electric, which will soon be deployed by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). The truck was demonstrated Jan. 9 at the Mack Customer Center in Allentown, Pa., to a group of truck editors and DSNY representatives. Jonathan 26 www.solidwastemag.com
Randall, senior vice-president of North American sales and marketing, said DSNY – the world’s largest sanitation department – is the ideal fleet to put the truck through its paces. “There’s no tougher testing ground for something like this,” he said. DSNY is on a mission to become carbon-neutral by 2050, and to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2035.
“We can’t do it without this electric truck,” said Rocky DiRico, deputy commissioner of the NYC Sanitation Department. The fleet runs 2,346 collection trucks, 99 percent of which are Macks. It collects about 12,000 tons of residential and industrial waste every day. The truck was slated to arrive in New York City by January 13 and will be put into service sometime around Earth Day in April. Its initial route has already been chosen – a 29-km waste collection route in a middle-class New York neighborhood. But don’t read into the
