Classic Refuse Trucks HEIL

Big Bite and Power-Trak Rear Loaders

Big-Bite DuraPak 25-yard rear loader
        The seemingly limitless growth at Heil brought the need for capital. Privately owned since its founding in 1901, the company mulled the prospects of going public, but ultimately accepted a buyout offer from elevator titan and conglomerate Dover Corporation in 1993. Dover had already acquired Sargent Industries in 1984, which held the patents to several Heil products, most notably the Formula 5000 rear loader. Joseph Heil Jr. retired shortly after the sale to Dover, ending three generations of family ownership of the iconic refuse equipment company. He passed away in March of 1996. Under new ownership, Heil remains atop the industry it had a large part in building, and has been making refuse truck bodies for over eighty years, an astonishing record.

    The newest Heil rear loader introduced was the Big Bite in 1999. The name may cause some confusion, since Heil Europe has used it on the Colectomatic Mark V for decades. This American Big Bite was a big bulk loader, with a typical four-cylinder slide-sweep packer and a cavernous 3.6-yard hopper. Ostensibly, this filled the gap left when the Mark V was discontinued in the late 1970s as Heil's full-sized commercial rear loader. Ironically, it was almost identical in function and layout to the Leach 2-R Packmaster, whose patents wee allegedly infringed upon by the Mark V Colectomatic! The Big Bite was the first new Heil rear loader in twenty years, and debuted with DuraPack body shell.

    The Big Bite was replaced with the almost identical-looking Power-Trak Commercial (PTC) in 2001. The big difference was inside, where Heil added a new patented parallel track design which better distributed stresses, away from the hopper and towards the load. 150,000 PSI steel was used in the high wear areas, and "contractor kits" could be added as extra armor on C&D service. The PTC can be identified from the outside by the presence of an additional short trackway visible on the side of the upper tailgate. The Big Bite has only the single main trackway on each side.

    The PTC was joined by a mid-sized rear loader called the PT-1000, which bears a strong likeness to the old Formula 4000, but is in actuality closer to the PTC in design. It is a pure slide-sweep design without the articulating pivot blade found on the F4000. A more generous 3-yard hopper and 1,000 pounds/yard payload would put it closer to the high-compaction range. It ultimately replaced the F4000 in the USA and most worldwide markets, although a version is still being sold in South America called the PT-4000. This is somewhat confusing, since the South American PT-4000 is not a Power-Trak packer, rather it is a Formula 4000 with a curved body shell. To confuse matters even more for truck spotters, the old Formula 4000 tailgate design has been used on the Metro-Pak rear loader made by arch-rival McNeilus since the late 1990s. This would seem to indicate that either the U.S. patent on the 4000 has expired, or Heil has sold or licensed the design to McNeilus.

The Big Bite was Heil's new commercial rear loader for 1999

Heil bought Bayne Machine Works in 2001, a manufacturer of cart tippers as shown on this Big Bite

With patented dual-track system, the Power-Trak Commercial (PTC) replaced the Big Bite in 2001

...but the PTC has a second trackway (30) above the main track to redirect compaction stresses

The PT-1000 is a mid-range rear loader which can still pack up to 1,000 pounds per cubic yard

LEFT: The McNeilus Metro-Pak has a tailgate and packer nearly identical to the Heil Formula 4000
RIGHT: The PT-4000 is sold by Heil in South America, which is a 4000 tailgate with curved body shell

PATENTS:

Patent #	Description	Inventor	Assignee	Date
US6485244	Dual Track Assembly for Refuse...	Bobby McKinney	Heil Co.	July 28, 2001

5/29/17