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Advanced Waste Services Inc.
West Allis
Innovation: ‘Vacsimizer’
www.advancedwasteservices.com
Driving a large semi-trailer in and around tight spaces is not an easy task. But drivers for West Allis-based Advanced Waste Services Inc. no longer have to make those difficult maneuvers.
The company has developed a truck, which it calls the “vacsimizer,” that allows the trailer to expand and contract to meet highway weight requirements and adjust to available space.
“We needed a way to get the same capacity of a semi-trailer, but still have that maneuverability,” said Mike Malatesta, president of Advanced Waste Services.
Advanced Waste Services removes industrial waste from its clients’ facilities. Often times that involves maneuvering its trucks into tight spaces to get as close as possible to a pit or sludge storage container, and then running a hose to the pit or container.
Sometimes when it was difficult to maneuver into the space, AWS would opt for a smaller truck. But that meant sacrificing the truck tank’s capacity and often required two trucks to do the same job.
“The idea to create something that we could legally use on the freeway system, that one guy could operate and would give us the capacity and the maneuverability we desired had been brewing in our minds for a long time,” said Jason Derby, vice president maintenance operations. “Finally we just decided we had done enough talking and we just needed to do it.”
Malatesta, Derby and general manager Jeff Dean, began drawing up sketches and searching for manufacturers to assist them with the project.
“Originally we were going to do it all in house, but as time went on we realized we wanted this done faster and we knew there were companies out there that already had the capabilities and the technology to build the kind of trailer we needed,” Derby said. “It was kind of like, why reinvent the wheel?”
The company contracted with a trailer manufacturer to produce an adjustable frame that would allow a single person to contract the frame in order to maneuver the trailer through tight facility grounds, and expand again in order to make the necessary weight for highway driving.
Highway laws prohibit trucks from weighing more than 82,000 pounds when fully loaded.
AWS worked with Denton, Texas-based Peterbilt Motors Co. to create the lightest semi possible, and focused on using the lightest parts and materials possible for the creation of the rest of the truck.
“We talked to more than 20 manufacturing companies, and most of them said it couldn’t be done,” Derby said. “We later found one that was willing to do it for us, so we went ahead with the rest of the plan.”
Once the trailer and the vacuum equipment were loaded on, the truck weighed in at a mere 38,000 pounds with no load.
“That leaves an extra 42,000 pounds of available space for waste product,” Derby said.
The company had a predecessor to the vacsimizer that did not expand and contract, but was a smaller tank truck, Malatesta said.
“The smaller truck weighed about 47,000 pounds and only carried a 25,000 gallon tank. We needed to create something that was going to allow us to get the job done in one trip,” he said.
Advanced Waste Services has a patent pending on the vacsimizer. The equipment has been tested and should be used regularly on jobs within a few weeks, Malatesta said.
“I see it as a big competitive advantage for us,” he said. “Not only can we now do something we couldn’t do before, but we haven’t seen anything like this anywhere in the U.S. The new equipment allows us to do something nobody else can do.”
Right now the vacsimizer is the only one of its kind, but after a few months of using it, the company plans to design a business plan to bring the product to market and sell it to other people in the industry.
“We think other people in the industry could use this too. We try to be elite in everything that we do,” Malatesta said. “The development of this project goes right along with our mentality. If we need something and we can’t buy it, we’ll build it. Our goal is to perfect the process, create efficiency and make things easier for our customers.”
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