On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 09:22:34 +0000, Victoria Clare
wrote:

Frogleg wrote

We put the wheely bins out at the curb, and they're
collected by 1-man trucks with automatic grabbing arms,

I don't think that would work in our narrow, steep and winding cornish
lanes, where every house is a different distance from the road, and there
is certainly no curb (or for that matter, pavement).

Oh, but I've seen the Ground Force van in some mighty tight
situations. :-)

The houses are quite widely separated too, and I think one reason the
collection service is so limited is that running collection services over a
long distance for each house is relatively expensive.

Your grabbing trucks might be able to pick up rubbish for 10 houses in, say
200 yards : our binmen might have to travel half a mile or more to do the
same number of houses.

Let's see: 200 yards is 600 feet; the minimum lot width is 50 feet; so
10 houses in 200 yards is a very good estimate. (Cross-streets take up
the extra footage. ) And it's flat, flat with predominantly
retangular street layout. Now I'm wondering how (or if) *we* do rural
or semi-rural rubbish collection. The rich people along the
waterside are more widely separated, of course, but this road is also
flat and they put their bins out to the edge of the road same as I do.