Waste Pro has unveiled the newest addition to its Garbage Truck Museum: a 1930s (exact year unknown) DeMartini that was originally built in San Francisco. At the time, a group of Italian immigrants who called themselves “scavengers” because they had to scavenge to survive created a company (now called Recology) that by law was the only company in the city of San Francisco allowed in the waste collection industry. They formed an association of 100 operations, some even using horse-drawn carts to collect waste. After taking it upon themselves to make their own trucks in 1918, the DeMartini exploded in popularity—it was seen on every street in San Francisco by the mid-1920s, according to Waste Pro.
