The City of Burbank’s *NEW* Battle Motors McNeilus ZR Garbage Truck!

After decades of buying Autocar Heil Rapid Rails, Burbank has changed course and has gone with Battle Motors McNeilus ZRs as their choice for their newest garbage trucks! This truck is the first of many to come, including some electric garbage trucks. These trucks will begin replacing the oldest trucks first and work their way down the line. I believe their oldest trucks nowadays are the 2016 Autocar ACX Heil Rapid Rails, which ironically, I filmed brand new about 10 years ago. It’s crazy how those are being retired and replaced now. I had known about this truck for a few months now and I monitored it closely. It sat in the yard in the same spot for a while. Last Friday, I checked their yard and noticed the truck was no longer parked in there and the search for it began! After looking around their Friday collection area for about 15 minutes, I finally found it on greenwaste. Here in Burbank, the same truck collects all 3 streams of waste on a route. They start with trash first, dump, then return for greenwaste, dump again, and finally return for recycle. This was the very first day this truck had gone out on route to collect. Talk about good timing and pure luck to catch it on a day like this. I spoke to the very cool driver and he said he loved this truck. He was a big fan of the ZR arm’s 12 foot reach compared to the Heil Rapid Rail’s arm which has an 8 foot reach. He also noted how he liked that he no longer had to shake the cans a bunch of times to fully empty them like you do in a Rapid Rail. So it’s safe to say that this is a huge improvement for the City of Burbank’s automated garbage truck fleet. I’m very curious to see how these will workout for Burbank in the long run and what the other drivers will think of these in comparison to their old trucks. So enjoy this truck collecting greenwaste. I found him half way through his greenwasre run before he finished and took off to the dump. I stuck around and waited for him to come back for recycle. The video of this truck on recycle will be uploaded soon. At the end of the video, I included a clip of the city’s bulky item truck. A newer CNG Autocar ACX Heil Rear Loader. Unfortunately, they were completely done when I ran into them but the crew was kind enough to grab a mattress in an alleyway so I can get a quick video. A big thanks to the crew for that! Please enjoy the video and let me know what you think! A huge, huge thanks to the very friendly driver, James, for sharing his opinion on this truck and for allowing me to follow along and film this brand new truck at work. As mentioned earlier, I have one more video of this truck on recycle that I will upload soon. Thank you all for watching! Filmed: May 1, 2026 in Burbank, California.