(Left to Right) Brian, Vince and Duane Bowles. The family has provided equipment for the waste industry for over 50 years
After Maxon Industries bought out Western/Bemars, Bowles moved operations into the old Bemars building in Montebello, while construction began on their own new facility in San Bernardino County, just north of Riverside. The move to Montebello was intended to be only temporary, until the new shop was finished. However, due to certain complications, they ended up staying for almost fifteen years, until the late 1980s when the new building in Rialto was finally completed.
It was during this time that Bowles introduced a new circular-bodied front loader to complement their existing line. These were partial packers, with horizontally mounted cross-ram packing cylinders. As the demand was growing for lighter-weight bodies, the circular structure was a natural choice.
Circular FL owned by longtime Bowles customer Crown Disposal. Like many western haulers, Crown was still using bottom-lift forks.
The new model was a half-pack with tilt dumping and a hydraulic end gate
The White WX tilt-cab (now Volvo) has become a stalwart of the refuse industry.
This one is set up for one-man residential pickup, with right-hand drive and a carry bucket
As always, the new model was also available as a roll-off unit
The successor to the old Load-N-Pack was this new drop-frame side loader. In addition to the packer blade which clears the hopper, it also has a full-pack blade which crushed the load already within in the body and served as an ejection plate. This Fallbrook Disposal unit is mounted on White's WXLL, the Low Cab Forward (LCF) version of their WX series.
Between 1978 and 1984, Bowles constructed an experimental refuse truck for residential refuse collection. This unique vehicle, which was built entirely by Bowles, featured uni-frame construction, hydrostatic rear drive axle and a full-pack/full-eject side load packer.
Although the truck never went into regular production, this working prototype is still in existence. During the summer of 2009, Duane Bowles generously brought it out for a demonstration for CRT contributors Zachary Geroux and Bill Tetreault. Thanks to their efforts, we now have available complete photo documentation of this unusual vehicle, including a test-drive and working demonstration which has been captured on video.
A ten-minute video tour is available at You Tube or can viewed below:
Vince had a heart attack in 1984, and in 1989 suffered his first stroke, which left him confined to a wheelchair. A second one followed six months later, and in 1992, Vince Bowles passed away. His son Duane recounts how much of a fighter Vince was throughout his life. Even after his strokes left him incapable of speech, he was still out on the shop floor every day, making sure that the products that bore his name were of the utmost quality and finest craftsmanship.
Duane's son, Brian Bowles, formed Compaction Control Industries (CCI) in the early 1990s, which dealt strictly with stationary compactors. CCI absorbed S. Vincen Bowles Inc., and some later model Bowles front loaders have been built under the CCI name. Duane currently serves as Vice-President of the company.
The contributions made by Samuel Vincen Bowles to the waste hauling industry may never be fully appreciated. He was a visionary, whose designs revolutionized the collection of bulk refuse. His early front loaders helped realize the full potential of the detachable container in a multiple-stop collection system. The Bowles partial pack front loader added increased efficiency. Once mostly a California phenomenon, the partial packer, or 'half-pack', eventually caught-on (with an increasingly weight-conscious national industry) some thirty years after Bowles' original design hit the streets in 1956. Like many of the innovations that came from his drafting board, it has virtually become an industry standard.
The fantastic array of equipment that rolled out of Bowles' workshops is a testament to his talent. Clearly, he was never satisfied with his own accomplishments, and always looking for improvements. The period from 1952 to 1960 is especially noteworthy for the rapid advances Bowles made, and the variety of products and options available, as we have seen in the preceding chapters. Ultimately, the front loader evolved from many ideas, put forth by many individuals. However, if any one person could be called the "Father of the Front Loader", that person would most certainly have to be Samuel Vincen Bowles.
REFERENCES
Vintage Bowles Literature in PDF at the Classic Refuse Trucks Library
