Garbage truck
truck specially designed to collect small quantities of waste and haul the collected waste to a solid waste treatment facility
A garbage truck is a truck specially designed to collect municipal solid waste and transport it to a solid waste treatment facility, such as a landfill, recycling center or transfer station. In Australia they are commonly called rubbish trucks, or garbage trucks, while in the United Kingdom bin lorry or rubbish lorry is commonly used. Other common names for this type of truck include trash truck in the United States, and refuse truck, junk truck, bin wagon or bin van elsewhere. Technical names include waste collection vehicle, refuse collection vehicle (RCV) and sanitation truck. These vehicles are commonly seen in many urban areas.
History
Wagons and other means had been used for centuries to haul away solid waste. Among the first self-propelled garbage trucks were those ordered by Chiswick District Council from the Thornycroft Steam Wagon and Carriage Company in 1897 described as a steam motor tip-car, a new design of body specific for "the collection of dust and house refuse".
The 1920s saw the first open-topped trucks being used, but due to foul odors and waste falling from the back, covered vehicles soon became more common. These covered trucks were first introduced in more densely populated Europe and then in North America, but were soon used worldwide.
The main difficulty was that the waste collectors needed to lift the waste to shoulder height.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Garbage truck” as truck specially designed to collect small quantities of waste and haul the collected waste to a solid waste treatment facility. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as truck specially designed to collect small quantities of waste and haul the collected waste to a solid waste treatment facility. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20463. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1897.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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This entry incorporates text from “Garbage truck” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.