AU2003100938A4 - Clean Up Vehicle - Google Patents

Description

AUSTRALIA PATENTS ACT 1990 Provisional Specification Clean Up Vehicle The invention is described in the following Statement.

For many years the collection of 'Clean Up Campaign' refuse has been carried out by Municipal Councils and their sub-contractor operators using normal rear loading garbage compaction vehicles which has involved manual loading of large, heavy objects. This practice is dangerous for the operatives and inefficient in practise. Occupational Health and Safety issues are now of Prime importance and this old practice is considered to be undesirable, however Council rate payers require these 'clean up items' to be removed from their premises. As the objects are mostly too large to be placed into the common 240-litre capacity wheeled garbage bin there is no alternative but to leave them at the kerbside.

A development of this collection service to obviate the dangers of manual loading has been fit truck loading cranes to conventional tipper trucks so that the objects can be safely lifted from the ground and placed onto the truck bed for transport and tipping at the disposal point. This has largely overcome the Occupational Health and Safety issues but the failure of this development is that the weight/volume of material which can be loaded onto an open tipper body is limited and thus entails very frequent trips to the disposal, and in turn more vehicles being required to service a given area.

To increase the efficiency of this improved safe collection system the Garwood CUV (Clean Up Vehicle) has been specially devised in order to combine the safety of mechanical loading with the greater payload potential afforded by compaction of the collected refuse.

A further intention in the design of the CUV is to be able to enable the vehicle to also service the new 'in ground' refuse storage containers now being introduced into areas of high density living.

These large containers have to be lifted out of the underground storage areas by crane and then bottom discharged into collection vehicles. In this manner the CUV can be more versatile and efficient for Council use.

The Garwood Clean Up Vehicle has been designed to accept the mounting of a conventional truck loading crane onto a pedestal constructed at the front near side corner of the body, just behind the drivers' cabin. The pedestal is so positioned to allow the crane to be able to slew through approximately 130o. These movements allow the pick up from ground level of bulk materials left at the kerbside and the elevation of said materials to a point at the centre longitudinal of the vehicle where they can be dropped through an aperture in the roof of the CUV body. This aperture has a side entry point to the near side of the vehicle to aid entry of the objects to be loaded.

Once the materials have been loaded through the aperture the operator can activate a control which will energise the specially designed compaction plate to move across the loading area to force the loaded materials towards the rear of the vehicle and to clear the loading area for further loading.

Once loading at the collection site has been completed the operator can activate another control which will energise the same compaction plate to extent fully towards the rear of the vehicle with full hydraulic force to compact the materials against the rear of the body, or onto other materials already previously loaded into the body.

The compaction plate is of a special design which includes a return at the top of the panel which tends to force the refuse materials downwards into the body as the panel travels across the open loading aperture. The face of the panel includes a vee section leading edge, running vertically up and down the panel. The purpose of this vee section is to intensify the compaction forces to better break up items such as furniture to ensure maximum volumetric loading potential.

When the vehicle is fully loaded with materials to the point where the compaction plate cannot move freely down the body then the vehicle can be driven to the disposal. At this junction the tailgate of the CUV can be elevated by hydraulic means to open up the rear of the vehicle. The operator would then activate the compaction plate to move fully down the body and in so doing eject the cargo.

The body proper of the CUV is of a particularly heavy duty construction to withstand the compaction forces involved. The compaction plate runs in guide channels built into the lower side areas of the body. Removable industrial plastic pads are fitted to prolong the life of the components. The floor area beneath where the top loaded materials fall is a heavily reinforced structure to resist deformation.

The guide channels are side mounted to prevent damage from falling objects which could occur if the guide rails were floor mounted.

Claims (4)

1. A top loading refuse compactor body fitted with a hydraulic crane mounted into a pedestal on the near side front comer area of the body.

2. A loading aperture has a side entry point to the nearside of the vehicle combined with a top loading roof aperture.

3. A heavy duty compaction plate with a downward shaped return at the top of the structure and a vertical vee section on the face is used to compact the incoming material towards the rear of the body.

4. The operation of the compactor allows a two-stage operation. In that stage 1 allows the compaction plate to clear material from the loading area and stage 2 allows the compaction plate to travel the whole length of the body to compact the loaded material against the back door of the machine. The compaction plate is mounted into guide channel built into the lower side areas of the body. These areas are fitted with industrial plastic removable wear pads.