MURRAY – It is certainly atypical to see piles of leaves donning the roads of Murray in mid-January. Ron Allbritten, street and solid waste manager for the City of Murray, advised that crews are about three weeks behind schedule due to equipment breakdowns and difficulty sourcing the parts necessary to fix them.
He said crews were wrapping up the first week of leaf pickup when the city’s leaf vacuum broke down. The problem was in the machine’s diesel exhaust system.
“Part of the exhaust line broke,” Allbritten explained. “Basically, it’s a filter on the exhaust that catches the particulate (from the diesel engine). When that gets so full, it goes through a regen system that burns it out, cleans it, then it goes back to working again.”
Allbritten said, “We went to order the part, and there were only five of them in the whole US.” All five were in California, “and they wouldn’t part with their parts.”
Crews were able to find a workaround and welded the broken exhaust line, but, according to Allbritten, “We just put a band-aid on the problem.”
Allbritten advised his dealer has ordered the part, “but John Deere isn’t expecting to even make any production on that part until February of this year.”
“Luckily, we were able to get it up and running again, but it’s a temporary fix,” he acknowledged.
“It’s a complex piece of equipment and anything that’s complex, a lot of the time, requires a lot of maintenance,” Allbritten noted. “That’s part of the reason why we tell people in our leaf pickup rules to not put any brush or anything except leaves (in leaf piles). It can either cause injury to our workers, or it may cause injury to the equipment itself.”
“It’s not a cheap piece of equipment,” Allbritten added. “If I remember right, that leaf truck cost roughly $200,000.”
In addition to the delayed start this year, leaf pickup has also been slow-going because many of leaf piles around town are partially frozen. Crews often have to use rakes, or even shovels, to break up the leaves before they can be vacuumed.
Currently, crews are working in Section G which includes the areas between 16th St. and Robertson Road N, from College Farm Road to Main Street. Allbritten advised that crews will move on to Section H next. To view the current pickup location, go to the following website: http://murrayky.gov/details.php?id=128.
