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2 of St. Louis' new trash trucks are finally here

The new trucks will help take care of the piles of stinking garbage around the city.

ST. LOUIS — It's been a long time coming, but St. Louis finally has two brand new trash trucks.

People around the city have been complaining for months about trash pick-up problems. Monday, the city's streets director told 5 On Your Side the two new trucks will help change the trash collection game in St. Louis.

“These are two of our new cart collection trucks,” said Jamie Wilson.

The specialized new rigs will help cover collection gaps left by older trucks that break down and have to go to the shop for repairs.

“This will build that capacity where we won't have to pull from our alley trucks to come help out on our cart collections,” said Wilson.

The new trucks are just part of the solution. In recent months trash crews have staggered their hours and routes to allow mechanics better access to broken equipment. The result has been better pickup around the city.

The downside has been long, inconsistent hours for crews. And they're ready to get back to normal.

“The more the trucks come in, the easier it is to go back to that,” said Wilson.

The new trucks were delayed by a week because of last-minute inspections. But they are now ready to roll out first thing Tuesday.

Cheryl Thomas hopes that means good things for the alley behind her home. She says last week every dumpster in the alley was overflowing.

“That way you won't have all this trash that's accumulating,” said Thomas.

You might be thinking, "It's a big city, how are two trash trucks going help that much?" These trucks run 13 routes each day. Before the new trucks arrived, there were only 14 trucks. You don't have to be a math whiz to see how just a couple problems could cause trash to pile up. Now, the crews have a couple backups.

As far as the new trucks are concerned, you'll see them in the Wells/Goodfellow and Fox Park neighborhoods.

The city is expected to get 13 more new trucks before the end of the year.

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