The 2016 Los Angeles Marathon Cleanup

About a week before the annual LA Marathon I decided I should check out the cleanup operation that takes place between the course being closed to runners and being reopened to traffic. This was the first year I've thought of doing this so I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and just by looking at the length of this video you'll see I ended up being quite successful lol.
I decided to start my search for the cleanup crew at mile 12 of the route so I was pretty centrally located. I arrived about a half hour later than I intended due to bad traffic conditions (that were to be expected), and that section of the route had been completely reopened to traffic. I immediately took off West down through Hollywood and pretty quickly ran into the tail end of the City of LA's sweeper operation. They only had about a block before they hit West Hollywood city limits and took off, so from there I took a look at how West Hollywood was taking care of their section of the marathon route...
In West Hollywood Athens was running two front loaders collecting anything they could, followed by their sweeper contractor taking care of the rest. They were just about finished when I found them which wasn't a huge deal since it was just Athens' boring modern fleet, so I continued on into Beverly Hills...
At around the mile 16 mark along Burton Way looked to have been the largest water station for the 25,000 runners, and right as I pulled up Beverly Hills Public Works was starting the collection of some MASSIVE piles of little water cups and cardboard trash cans, using their New Way Diamondback and McNeilus Metro-Pak, followed by 4 sweepers. That shortish section took them nearly an hour to complete. I followed the crew through the city where we eventually ran into a nice old Sterling Condor which had started on the other side of the city and worked its way East. At that point the garbage trucks were done and the sweepers were just getting the little bit that was left so I decided to continue on.
I assumed that the LA City crews went straight to Westwood and Brentwood (the neighborhoods that follow Beverly Hills along the marathon route) after taking off from the Sunset Strip, and given how long ago that had been I decided to head straight to the end of the route in Santa Monica to see what was happening there...
Despite the very long time it took to get from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica, many runners had yet to finish yet so I decided to grab a late lunch and then check back on what the cleanup status was. At first it just appeared to be a bunch of little tiny dump trucks taking what they could followed by a small fleet of sweepers compared to the other cities, but just before I was getting ready to leave I saw the city's older New Way. From there I decided to call it a day, however at nearly dusk while waiting at the transit hub I saw a Curbtender drive through the intersection, which after watching the recorded marathon later I learned collected long lines of 300s placed at the water stations.
The sweepers sort of snuck their way into this video, so any sweeper fans should be satisfied.
This video's contents:
00:01 - City of LA Street Services: Older Sterling Acterra/Elgin Broom Bear and newer Freightliner M2/Elgin Broom Bear in Hollywood. My guess is that Sanitation was ahead of them with their trucks.
00:20 - Athens Services: Autocar ACX/McNeilus Contenders in West Hollywood
03:41 - City of Beverly Hills: Ford F550/New Way Diamondback, Freightliner M2/McNeilus Metro-Pak, Freightliner M2/Tymco 600 Series, and Sterling Condor/McNeilus Standard Series. The Diamondback has unfortunately slowed way down since I originally filmed it brand new a couple years ago and the Metro-Pak wasn't particularly fast either. Because the Condor started on the other side of the city and worked its way East to meet up with the other trucks, they were unfortunately finished when that happened so I couldn't get any collecting footage. Hopefully that truck will still be around next year, but I believe this is their last Condor so it might not be.
22:42 - City of Santa Monica: Freightliner M2/Tymco 600 Series and CCC LET/New Way Viper. The New Way mostly just handled the Big Bellies in and around downtown while little dump trucks took care of the rest.
I would consider the marathon to be one of the biggest days of the year for the city, and my favorite day to explore the city despite the rough transportation conditions. I'll be back next year, and I plan to start at the beginning of the course and work my way West to the beach, so hopefully I'll see more of the City of LA's operation, as well as Santa Monica's.
Thanks to all the friendly crews from all the different haulers and municipalities!

[@cagarbagetrucks]

Great work! Love seeing Street Services doing there thing.

[@MattTrains2001]

Brilliant footage and would love to see more like it.

[@northcentralrefuse4485]

Nice work, I always thought that LA did everything for things like cleanups but I guess I have to consider those other areas, Nice to see footage of the sweepers, I used to take footage of them and I think I have a couple of clips on my computer, Those Athens FLs were awesome! The Beverly Hills clean up teams were good, I enjoyed that Condor RL the most. I can imagine the clean up SaMo had to do on the beach after runners crossed the finish line. Great and creative idea for a video!

[@legodude24652]

Holy shit dude... that was a pretty solid video, definitely not expecting that much trash haha. Nice work for sure! Beverly's Condor RL sounded mean too!

[@WasteManTony]

+legodude24652 lol yup, absolutely crazy. West Hollywood and Beverly even had supervisors helping out. Thanks!

[@TrashBulldogProductions]

Nice! Seems like back-cracking labor though.

[@kibia16]

I am one of the volunteers at the Mile 19 Water Station in Westwood every year since our church is right there on the route. I can tell you that LA sanitation is not involved with the cleanup. The only trucks that are involved are street services. They bring these extra long dump trucks and put all the trash in them. The front loader tractors pushes all of the cups and trash in to a pile and then loads it in to the dump trucks. Then the fleet of street sweepers comes through and sweeps the road getting anything that the tractors missed.

[@WasteManTony]

+Joshua Nickel interesting to hear, appreciate it!

[@user-yi1iu3it7x]

HDㄊ

[@WMmaster626]

Nice work!!! Great opening shot, and it actually is nice to see some of LA's street services division. On to Athens - I was quite surprised to see that they were running ACX/McNeilus' with Dumpsters when they have a ton of low entry front loaders with Curotto/carry cans. Nonetheless, that was cool to see, I've always had a thing for Dumpster-turned-carry can collection lol Interesting that they had a contracted sweeper company with them instead of their own fleet. I had no idea Bev Hills had that Metro Pak. The sweepers collecting all those cups were pretty awesome. I always found sweepers pretty cool too. That Condor was heaps cool. What a great sounding unit. Is that their regular bulky items truck? Nice Santa Monica stuff, their RL looks great. Curious what LA ran. I would imagine that a carry can, especially the LA style ones, would be useful for these events since you could sweep lots of things into it compared to RLs. Fantastic job! Really enjoyed watching the teamwork needed to clean up the streets, and seeing the equipment in convoys, like the sweepers, was especially great. Looking forward to next year!

[@WasteManTony]

+WMmaster626 I wish I could get some of Street Services' PB Loaders and their roll-offs but they're pretty much the exact opposite of Sanitation: unfriendly and unprofessional lol. I was a little surprised by Athens' truck choice too. I believe both of Bev's McNeiluses handle alley clean ups. I'm curious as to what LA had running too. They do have some loaders and modified Vipers they use for illegal dumps so those may have been a possibility. Thanks Aaron!

[@TheNVTrashMan]

Excellent video! Wow that's a lot of water cups lol. I thought that Athens truck collecting all that trash was pretty fun. Wow Beverly Hills has some cool RLs. All their waste goes to a dirty MRF, right? Great work with this one!

[@WasteManTony]

+TheNVTrashMan yup, it all goes to Recology in Sun Valley. Thanks!

[@wnytrashtrucks]

these guys probly never want to see a cup again

[@James-uc2nd]

+david brunner Trash Trucks and Lawn Care lol

[@michaelsandford1015]

interesting

[@virginiagutierez5477]

Jerusalén uul

[@litchar]

This is just bad all the way through from the rear loaders that let the garbage just fall back to fill the hopper to the plugged sweepers that through to garbage all over the place. This is as useless as those amusement cranes that won't grab the teddy bear.

[@clarithy1064]

Die können ja nix die Amerikaner 😂