Have you seen your friendly residential trash truck this week? New brightly colored wrapped messages go right to the heart of problematic issues and right into the hearts of the neighborhoods Las Cruces Utilities (LCU) serves. Four new messages feature a talking trash container saying: “Give me space!, No overfilling!, Tie me up!, and Trash day!”
“These messages represent the issues our drivers have the most problems with,” explains Robin Lawrence, LCU interim solid waste administrator. “Our drivers came up with the idea of using the large space on the sides of our trucks to reach customers, and they came up with the messages they consider most crucial.”
The image of the talking trash container is the result of designing a visual message tied into a humorous audio message that ran earlier in the year on four radio stations. The radio ad started with the sounds of a trash truck pulling up to empty a trash container that says, “Hey, how you doin’? I’m your plastic trash container. You know, the one with wheels that you take out to the curb each week.” The words were delivered with a New Jersey type accent.
Javier Ortega, LCU residential supervisor, says as he was driving one of the newly wrapped trucks back to the lot at LCU, “A couple of Las Cruces drivers beeped at me, grinning and giving me the thumbs up sign when they saw the truck. We hope this is a friendly and fun way to communicate with our customers.”
The messages have already been wrapped on the sides of nine trucks and there are three more to go when new trucks arrive later this year.
The one wrap that all the drivers wanted on their truck was the “Give me space!” message explaining that the big arm on the residential trucks needs 5 feet of space on each side to safely reach out and grab the container to empty it. “Each residential solid waste driver picks up trash from an average of 700 homes every day,” explains Lawrence. “They are on a set schedule and have to move quickly, but safely. If your container is too close to a mailbox, car, or other obstruction, you risk the probability of your container not being serviced as we cannot safely operate our equipment.”
Please, enjoy the new messages – and please, take them to heart!
You can reach Las Cruces Utilities at 528-3500 from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Las Cruces Utilities provides GAS – WATER – WASTEWATER – SOLID WASTE services to approximately 100,000 Las Cruces residents and businesses.
Suzanne Michaels provides this content on behalf of Las Cruces Utilities