The message
from Frogleg contains these words:

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 Ground Force truck is quite a bit smaller than the usual kind of
UK dustbin-trucks. And, let me assure you, the locations where the GF
truck goes are nowhere near as restricted as rural lanes in Cornwall
(and other places).It's common in rural areas, for householders to have
to carry their rubbish down to the nearest place the binmen can get the
truck...which might be a mile or more from the house.

Some areas of the UK do have the kind of trucks that grab a wheely-bin
and empty it, but the ones I've seen are never operated by one person
alone. There's a driver, plus a team of fetchers who move the bins to
the grab and remove them afterwards.

Janet.