Classic Refuse Trucks HIGHWAY TRAILER

Highway Trailer Company
Edgerton, Wisconsin

Highway Trailer Company of Edgerton, Wisconsin, was one of the 19th century trailer builders that made the transition into the automotive age.

By the late 1930s, the firm was producing a wide variety of trailer equipment such as line construction/pole derrick trucks, oil well drill rigs, as well as truck components such as power take-off units, winches, hitches and brakes.

    Highway Trailer's namesake product was well suited for municipal collection practices of the 1920s and 1940s, when multiple-trailer collection trains were used in many large cities. Drawn by motor trucks or horses, these could be used as collection "satellites" . Horses remained popular in refuse collection well into the motor age, for the same reasons they were used by milkmen. Horses could learn a route, and often did not require a driver, advancing from stop to stop on their own by following cues from the collectors. Once filled, the trailers were then coupled together in a central staging area and hauled to the disposal site, just as empty trailers were dropped off to replace them. A sliding canvas curtain was pulled over the load, not unlike the 'tarper' systems used on contemporary roll-off boxes.

    Highway Trailer also built, apparently, at least one copy of the Kurtz Conveyor, a special refuse body with a rear escalator-loader which was designed by a mechanic working for the Department of Sanitation, New York City (DSNY) in 1937. This was the first automated refuse loader to go in widespread service in New York.

    Though the DSNY had owned the patent, the city lacked manufacturing capacity to build these trucks in the large numbers needed. Thus, the Kurtz Conveyor trucks were built under contract by independent body makers. Gar Wood and Heil seem to have been supplied the bulk of these loaders. The one shown here may have been the only example built by Highway Trailer, or perhaps was part of a multiple-truck contract. It may also have been a prototype which was built for the City in a bid competition for a contract that was ultimately awarded to Gar Wood.

Shown above is truck number 287-682 on a GMC cabover chassis from the late 1930s, which is the only evidence currently available that links Highway Trailer to the New York Conveyor program. The Kurtz Conveyor bodies were produced through the late 1940s, at which time the City began using commercially available bodies such as the Gar Wood Load-Packer and City Tank Roto-Pac.

Highway Trailer survived through the 1970s, amid several ownership changes. They never returned to refuse body construction. However, in addition to trailers the firm did produce some vocational truck equipment such as the Hi-Arm lift trucks shown below:

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