Ask yourself this: who doesn’t want to drive a suck-up truck?
OK, OK, suck-up truck isn’t the proper name.
Technically, it’s the Tennant ATLV. That stands for All-Terrain
Litter Vehicle. City workers call it “the Tennant”—it’s an
alien-looking sit-on vacuum the size of a Bobcat with a wide
ground-level sucker on the front and a 15-foot hose vacuum on its
right. It can suck up a half-full can of Coke without so much as a
burp.
Eddie Boucher works for HRM and drives the Tennant. There are four
other similar city-owned machines, called Madvacs, but Boucher, who is
tanned, fit and with teeth whiter than milk glass, likes the Tennant
best. It was the first ATLV the city bought. And Boucher was the first
guy to take it out.
“I use that alone,” Boucher says of the long arm hose. “You can get
into the cracks and under benches and that.”
Boucher is a streetside celebrity for driving the Tennant, which is
one of two on-street vacuums dedicated to the capital district. He’s
been in more photos with tourists than he can count and says people on
Spring Garden Road sometimes yell when he’s off-duty, “Hey, where’s
your machine!?”
I ask him if the Tennant is hard to drive.
Nah!
One sunny Friday outside City Hall, I sat on its black vinyl seat. I
put my foot on the hydrastat. Toes down for forward; heel down to
reverse. I pressed the brake. I touched the button for lowering the
front vacuum.
Now, I’ve driven a golf cart. I’m decent at bumper cars. I sat for a
minute and pictured the engine roaring to life. I felt certain: I could
handle this super-sucking machine.
So, how about a spin?
Nah!
Boucher wasn’t the bearer of the bad news. (Secretly, I like to
think he would have let me take a go at siphoning up a few cigarette
butts and half-full cans.) But Brenton Heighton, work supervisor with
HRM Transportation and Public Works, had to put down his foot.
Kindly.
“You’re not the first to ask,” he says, smiling, “and I’m sure
you’re not going to be the last.”
But wouldn’t it be great? If residents could borrow the machines?
How cool would that be, if there was a little army of street- and
sidewalk-sweeping Haligonians, willing to clean up their neighbourhoods
in their spare time?
“They are very easy to drive,” Heighton concedes. “It’s similar to a
lawn mower.”
But…
“Well, like I said, it does have its schedules.”
The suck-up trucks are out from six to two every day. Or, rather,
every sunny day. Despite the ruggedness touted on the Tennant
website—“climbs curbs, navigates hills”—Heighton says they don’t go
out in the winter and are “temperamental in wet weather.”
Heighton doesn’t know the lifespan of a suck-up truck. “Until they
break,” he guesses. HRM’s are all well-maintained (mollycoddled,
perhaps?) and less than six years old. New, they cost in the $30,000
ballpark.
“We really have to take a stance that there is proper procedure for
running the machines.”
OK. OK.
But what if this volunteer street-level garbage militia team I’m
proposing took a weekend course? You know. To get certified.
HRM suck-up truck drivers do week-long training, Heighton says. And
even after that, for the first little while, “We keep them in the parks
where there are fewer people.”
Speaking of parks, Heighton’s maintenance crews are the folks who
keep the Grand Parade looking so handsome—the tree lights, the
flowers, the short grass. And you have to admire Heighton for this: he
was responsible for installing the barriers that keep out the
councillor’s cars.
Heighton’s crews also do downtown gum.
The big problem used to be cigarette butts, but as of last
year—whether people aren’t littering as much or because the suck-up
truck crews (even without my little army’s help, it seems) are so
efficient—Heighton says “they couldn’t find the cigarette butts
anymore. So they went to the gum.”
I guess I could get a high-powered sprayer and take care of
neighbourhood gum on my own, but it just doesn’t hold the same cachet
as the suck-up truck.
“Like I said,” Heighton patiently repeats, “we can’t just let anyone
drive them. We have to do due diligence with the training. And there is
insurance involved.”
Right. Insurance. But maybe we could sign waivers? Or get our own
insurance?…
Uh-huh.
Like, maybe if…
Uh-huh.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2009.
