Atherton Tablelands Recycling

Many of you may remember when I first travelled to Far North Queensland on holiday and did a trip up there getting footage of a few unique and different trucks at play back in June/July 2022 just over 4 years ago. Since then I have been back for a second time in August/September 2023 to focus on other council areas of interest that I hadn't had time for previously during the first trip. One of these places was the town of Atherton in Tablelands Regional Council, which sits about 90 minutes south-west of Cairns. Tablelands Regional Council was one of the many LGA's that was newly formed as a result of the amalgamations that took place across the state in 2007/2008, preceding the Shire of Atherton, Shire of Eacham, Shire of Herberton and Shire of Mareeba. However in 2013/2014, Mareeba broke away from Tablelands Regional Council and was established independently as Mareeba Shire Council once more, just as Port Douglas did the same from Cairns Regional Council, and Noosa did from Sunshine Coast Regional Council. During the late morning/early afternoon of Wednesday 30th August 2023 I set out to Atherton from my nearby accomodation in the hopes that I would be able to track down at least one or more of the local trucks that were running in the region. One of the reasons that inspired me to visit this location was because this council was still running domestic waste collection services in-house at the time, which was even more unique and cool when everywhere else around had been contracted out. Since taking footage of these trucks here, On 1st November 2023 Tablelands decided finally to contract out waste services and to no surprise JJs were awarded the contract being the successful tenderer. I understand today a total of 4 bogie drive Volvo FE 6x4 units with JJRE compactor bodies makes up the JJs fleet for side arms; units 23BB, 23BD, 23BE and 23EK. When council ran the collection service in-house, in late 2015 they took delivery of 4 single drive Isuzu FVD1000 4x2 18m3 Bucher Gen V's, and later in 2018 they took delivery of an Acco 6x4 22m3 Bucher Gen V (presumably added to the fleet to carry more tonnage in any single payload), which would've been one of the last Gen V's made on order around the same time as Boroonda's in-house fleet was manufactured before Bucher moved on to the Gen 6 side load model. Another interesting aspect about the in-house fleet was the fact that all 4 of the Isuzu's and Acco appears to be fitted with the extend-a-slide option that Bucher can provide with the arm lifters, although i wouldn't really think it would be necessary in a country location as much as a populated urban area would come in quite handy. In saying that, in cul-de-sacs and brand new estates developed today could possibly see some use and justification of it even here, no doubt I'm sure there's been times where it's been the difference between successfully reaching the bin and getting a hold of it versus having to get out to fetch a bin for collection. I also admire that all of their trucks had bull bars mounted onto the front of the grille, light bars connected to all of the bull bars and that all 5 of the in-house trucks had a spare tyre being carried around on the rear under the tailgate. That's how you know it's a country truck that services a rural location, not to mention some of the dust gathered on the arm lifter, wheels, mudguards and top of the tailgates above the beacons cages! You're not in a typical city or CBD area lol. It's nice as well that council went with some different signage for each of the 4 Isuzu's and the Acco, they all look good, however the Acco is my favourite, how can you not like livery like that, breathtakingly beautiful and just stunning. I like too that the council plugged all their social media's on the side and back of the tailgate along with the website link and phone number, in fact I can't think of a single other council that has tried to be this approachable with signage plugging the social media's over the trucks, definitely a creative idea to connect better with local residents for sure. I only ended up with 6 minutes of recycling as shortly after from memory the driver was off to unload and then head to another area meanwhile I achieved a longer duration of garbage as that driver still had a bigger area left to collect from, which I wasn't disappointed with as the garbage truck was the better truck in sound over the recycle truck from an enthusiast's point of view, no doubt about that at all hahaha. Regardless, I hope both videos are enjoyable and for those who may be wondering if there's anything else to come from this part of this state in future, yes don't worry I have a few more videos yet up my sleeve to pull out tucked away in the hard drive of archives, all in good time ;) ;P. More to come in future from here and other places in general too, stay tuned. Cheers