Automated Side-Loading Garbage Truck

Keep your LEGO city tidy with an Automated Side-Loading Garbage Truck!

This project is a father and son collaboration between Levi and Scott Hasse. We originally submitted our design to LEGO Ideas five years ago, and with community support we were honored to reach 10k supporters. Although LEGO chose not to make our Ideas project into an official set, our original bin arm design has had a significant impact on how LEGO trash gets collected. With this submission to the Bricklink Designer Program, we are now excited to be entering what we hope is the final chapter of our long journey.

Our project reinvents minifig-scale garbage collection. The truck has several functions:

♻ A working side-loading bin arm that can pick up and empty LEGO trash bins into the truck’s hopper

♻ A trash compacting ram to push trash from the hopper to the dumper

♻ A dumper that is hinged to tip back with a tailgate that opens up to dump what you’ve collected

Both the bin arm and compacting ram are operated by turning knobs. When fully extended, the ram pushes all the trash into the dumper for easy dumping. This set integrates some basic Technic elements such as crown gears and a rack and pinion mechanism to create sophisticated functions in a compact minifig-scale vehicle build. We’ve also included a transfer station to keep collected trash and recycling organized. The transfer station can also store the trash bins and the extra tiles for the truck.

You can switch the printed tiles on the truck’s doors to change from recycling to trash collection. Two minifig workers operate the truck to make sure everything runs smoothly. A minifigure fits comfortably in the cab, and another can ride along using the ladder and handrail.

The set comes with “waste” bricks that can be sorted into recycling and trash for individual collection.

Don’t forget to put your trash bins out, and please support and share this project!