Here is the first unit of many to arrive within the next couple months! While this new and unique arm and body combination has unsurprisingly made its way into various fleets up in Canada, it has really only debuted as a demo truck here in the States. Despite albeit successful trials and demonstrations across the country over the past year or so, it certainly hasn't seemed like many haulers have strayed off the path of purchasing your typical Automizers and Helping Hands. This makes the City of Santa Monica the first municipality I know of in the United States to have an Alley Hand in service.
MME (Municipal Maintenance Equipment) is the primary Labrie equipment dealer and distributor in California, based out of Sacramento with other satellite locations throughout the state. They have seen a sharp increase in business over the last couple years as several Northern Californian haulers have purchased large orders of Labrie/Leach/Wittke, though it has stayed relatively quiet in the southern part of the state. That is slowly changing however, obviously with Santa Monica's order but also with other cities such as Oxnard and L.A, who have demoed their equipment and seem to be rather fond of something that isn't a clanky Amrep. At Harrison, we had the pleasure of welcoming the guys from MME to demo their Alley Hand with us back in July for a couple days. After testing it on a variety of routes, I had very few complaints aside from easy cosmetic fixes.
Lalo, the driver in this video also had plenty of good things to say about his new truck. One of his favorite new features is the extensive 12 foot reach, a luxury he's never had on the other Scorpions and Curbtenders in the city's fleet. You'll see a couple clips in the video where he's demonstrating the reach for me. Another thing he appreciates is the massive 6 cubic yard hopper, which undoubtedly helps for the heavy setouts he sees on his Tuesday yard waste route (i.e. last clip).
As you may also notice, the unique Labrie grabbers are far more gentle on carts, a sharp contrast from the Scorpion pinchers of death that seem to have caused the death of several Rotos and Rehrigs in the city over the years. On the other hand, this gentleness can be a setback when it comes to emptying heavy yard waste carts, since not all the material will always fall out in one dump. With no decent way to shake carts as you would with an Amrep or Rapid Rail, it's not uncommon to leave a few carts half full throughout the route. Though not seen in this video, both Lalo and I found this drawback to be a little frustrating in our separate experiences of running the Alley Hand.
It was also neat filming my first Battle Motors chassis. Santa Monica has usually been one of the only haulers in the Los Angeles area loyal to Crane Carrier for most of their fleet, so these may be the only Battle trucks in the area for a little while.
Huge thanks to Saul from MME for keeping me updated on the arrival of these trucks, and to the star of the show Eduardo.