Emptying the more than 800 public wastebaskets in the entire city area, caring for thousands of trees in the city’s inventory and adequately maintaining six cemeteries with around 24,000 graves – these are only three of the dozens of different activities that the employees of the Technical Services of the City of Constance, TBK for short, perform day in, day out. “They ensure that the public spaces in the city are and remain clean, tidy and liveable,” reads the TBK’s company brochure. For mobile support, TBK relies on the FUSO Canter, which is ideal for municipal use.
Mesud Gök drives one of these Canters and makes almost 10,000 kilometres a year with it on his regular rounds through the picturesque town on Lake Constance in the service of the municipal cleaning service. The 7.5-tonne truck in typical municipal orange is the 7C18 model with a refuse collection body from Zoeller. Thanks to the compact dimensions and manoeuvrability of his refuse truck, Mesud Gök can not only drive the Canter easily through the often narrow streets of Constance’s old town, but also along the lakeside promenade. The Canter with its high payload is just right here, after all, the city cleaning staff dispose of about 450 tonnes of waste per year from the public waste bins alone.
Another FUSO Canter is used for cemetery maintenance, where the 7.5-tonne roll-off tipper collects the green waste that accumulates. The city of Constance has one main cemetery and five local cemeteries. Altogether, the employees of the department take care of about 17 hectares of so-called cemetery maintenance areas, which are laid out park-like and should always be in a dignified condition for the visitors. The Canter, which is equipped with a container with extra-high side walls for a high capacity, is the ideal vehicle for quick removal after work such as lawn mowing, hedge trimming or leaf removal.
A third 7.5-ton Canter is on the road for the TBK’s green care and gardening department, mainly for checking and maintaining the city’s tree population. With 14,900 specimens, there is plenty to do. The FUSO Canter can also score points in this task with its heavy-duty, but at the same time light and slim, design, because many of the trees are in inner-city locations that are difficult to access and cannot be easily reached by larger trucks.
In addition, this Canter with its practical and flexible platform body also takes on transports for the TBK’s carpentry division, which, among other things, takes care of the maintenance of the 72 municipal playgrounds. Two other FUSO Canters are used for road maintenance. One of them was specifically configured with an extra narrow driver’s cab, only 1.7 metres wide, and is thus the declared special vehicle for work in the narrowest alleys of the old town. All vehicles are equipped with the automatic Duonic dual-clutch transmission and are therefore extremely comfortable to drive. Thanks to the creep function, TBK employees can manoeuvre their Canter effortlessly, and the hill start assist is another practical aid in daily use.