TULSA, Oklahoma -
Tulsa's interim trash service is a week old now, and while there have been some complaints, both the city and the trash hauler say it's been a good start.
The interim service will be transitioning through October.
One of the new pieces of equipment out on the streets soon with the new service is a mini-truck that can zip into a cul-de-sac or backyard, if needed.
Marty Henson covers both ends of the trash service.
He's one of the co-owners of NeWSolutions and he drives a truck, too, picking up what's been missed on the first pass.
"Hopefully this next week will be a lot better because we've learned from our mistakes," Henson said.
A half size truck also helps make the job easier. It can do everything a big truck can do; it just doesn't hold as much.
"Right now, we're using this as a complaint truck and once we get the carts in, we'll use this for gated communities because the large trucks would tear up the asphalt and concrete," Henson said. "We have six more of these on the way."
7/2/2012 Related Story: Tulsa Trash Pickup Gets New Trucks, New Service
While New Solutions is rolling out their new equipment, the city is unloading thousands of new trash carts.
The city said it's going to take 400 trips by semi truck to get all of the trash and recycling carts from the factory to Tulsa. Once the wheels are on, the city will start sending them out to neighborhood, but there's so many of them that the job will take into the fall.
It only takes a second to put the wheels on each cart, but that step has to be repeated 500,000 times.
The carts will be distributed along routes, and as soon as homeowners get them, they can start using them.
NeWSolutions will eventually deploy trucks that lift the larger and heavier carts.
"And they'll be totally automated, where the arm will go out pick up the can dump it and set it back down," Henson said.
One week into the new trash service, the haulers are making their second pass through the city and refining the routes that driver and co-owner Marty Henson helped create.
"Sometime there's a gap left where one route ends and another route starts, and a lot of that was me not filling in the line for them. But when we miss them, we go get them," Henson said.
The city plans to lay out the sequence of distributing carts this Wednesday.
They'll start delivering them next Monday.
Thousands of new trash casts being received and assembled.
New trash casts being loaded into a semi truck for distribution.
A new trash truck.
