Secret museum tells the history of San Francisco trash

Inside Recology’s garbage collection hub for San Francisco, located in nearby Brisbane, is a somewhat secret museum devoted to the history of the city’s trash.

As modern garbage trucks lumbered by dumping their loads, Kenny Stewart raised a warehouse door to reveal the motherlode of garbage truck memorabilia. The collection featured nine vintage vehicles illustrating the evolution of the city’s trash collection, from horse carts to the first compactor trucks.

“It was a hard job and somebody had to do it,” pined Stewart, who serves as the maintenance manager for Sunset Scavengers, the waste business under the helm of Recology.

Stewart, who’s worked at Recology for four decades, was the prime mover in organizing and maintaining the collection, which begins with a humble horse or donkey-drawn cart from the 1800s. An antique car buff, he collected and helped restore the collection.

Next to the cart, he pointed out a larger horse-drawn cart manned by a three-person crew, with a large rear box where the third garbageman would sit sorting the recycling (yes, they even recycled back then) — cans, bottles, used rags. Stewart showed a picture of crews aboard a similar cart hauling away debris following the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

Stewart said back in the early days of trash collection in the city, the garbagemen would be assigned their designated collection areas daily, which led to grumbling, fighting and political maneuvering. Not long after, the city broke trash collection into sectors with workers assigned a designated area.

The collectors originally used burlap sacks to cart the garbage from their customers to their carts. Eventually they graduated to barrels, although some collectors still use the burlap in difficult-to-navigate collection areas like Telegraph Hill.

Stewart pointed out a motorized truck from the 1920s. That’s when the horses were retired as trash crews adapted motorized vehicles, though Stewart said they initially weren’t very excited about the additional horse power.

“They really didn’t like this type of vehicle,” Stewart said, “they liked the horse drawn cart because in this, they had to drive. With the horse-drawn cart, the horse knew the route.”

Stewart moved to a large, motorized truck from the 1940s painted fire engine red, which he and his team discovered in an almond orchard in the Central Valley. Stewart restored the truck, which is occasionally used in parades and events.

Another curious vehicle was a large white flat bed truck which crews once piled up with burlap sacks filled with trash. An archive photo of the truck showed it stacked a good twenty feet high with the sacks, leading one to wonder how they could pile them that high, and how they would stay on the truck once it was in motion. The truck was longer and narrower, used to reach some of the denser parts of the city like Chinatown.

“This is how they did it,” Stewart said, marveling at the early pioneers of trash. “They were very determined.”

In another corner of the museum, a larger trash truck with a bright yellow cab represented the future of trash hauling — the compactor truck. The truck, which was introduced in the 1960s, was equipped with a blade in the back that would compact the trash so more would fit.

“This represents how we picked up trash in San Francisco,” Stewart said. “The first mechanized vehicle in San Francisco.”

Although the museum occasionally hosts school groups touring the garbage facility, it’s generally not open to the public. But in a way, the trucks in its collection return to service nearly a dozen times — appearing in parades and at special events.

Stewart said the garbage trucks seem to inspire nostalgia in people who, despite the trashy subject, are transported back to another time in their lives.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the responses when I open the door and people see this,” Stewart said, “the responses when people see this - they’re in awe.”

Apparently, Stewart also can’t seem to get enough of the trash business. Last year he retired, only to return to work the very next day when a management need arose. His eyes welled up as he talked about the truck collection, and the many year’s he’s put in at Recology.

“You’ve gotta love your job,” Stewart said. “So I’m still here.”