In NYC they sometimes refer to garbage hauling as carting. I’m not sure why. The further you go from the metro area the fewer the companies that advertise as carting specialists. By the time you reach upstate the preferred phrase is rubbish or simply garbage. You could probably right an entire paper on this subject but let’s look at photos instead.
When not looking at mixer truck from his most recent NYC trip Ryan grabbed a few shots of garbage trucks across the city. Here is Castle Carting.
And Five Star Carting.
The owners of Mr. Rubbish have bucked the name trend with their busted old Western Star. Still cool.
Dirty and well used. A garbage truck really can’t look any other way.
I think that the term “carting” come from the use of trash or rubbish carts in NYC before the use of trucks. When cities were burn coal for heat, ash carts were used to haul the waste ash away from the houses to the wagon or truck. Trucks haul & carts cart.
NYC trash trucks are the biggest, baddest and toughest of all trash trucks.
I agree with Mark above that NYC garbage and ash used to be hauled in carts – typically starting as hand carts then later horse drawn. The refuse collected was brought to the river and dumped into areas seeking to expand the shore line usually around already stripped and sunk scrap wooden ship hulls. This how the NYC shore line had expanded from its original footprint.
Also agreed with Mark about NYC trash hauling trucks being the “biggest, baddest and toughest of all trash trucks” but add that they used to be the prettiest back in the mid 1980s and early 1990s when certain organized crime elements were entrenched in the waste hauling industry and before recycling caught on (or was mandated.) It was nothing to see trash trucks with custom paint, polished stainless steel inset panels between the ribs of the body, chrome bumpers, polished and cleaned daily bodies. The very used Western Star looks to be a beaten and dirty holdover from that era.