Leach 2R Packmaster verses the City Tank Loadmaster LM-400.
Zachary Geroux
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Welcome to the month of December! As I write this back in October, my Hawks are heading home after demolishing the 49ers and hopefully by the time this is published, well on their way to winning the NFC championship. The end of the year is a time for getting together with family, eating great food and giving thanks. I thought this month I would write a fireside story for you to read about the battle for the high compaction rear loader in the 1970s fought on the streets of New York. Don鈥檛 forget your hot chocolate.
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The Arena
New York is an amazing city with a rich and vibrant history, boasting the largest public sanitation department in the world to match. So it is no wonder why so many refuse truck builders have tried to dominate the lucrative New York market. Aside from the New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY), the City also hosts a large slew of private haulers who handle the commercial accounts including the demolition waste from this constantly evolving city. Unlike the rest of the country who uses roll-off trucks for the majority of their demolition hauls, New York City haulers use powerful rear loaders.
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Trend Setter: Leach 2R听
Today, rear load technology has reached its design culmination and most companies in the U.S. build their version of the 鈥渟lide-sweep鈥� style packer. Such was not the case in the 1960s. Leach debuted the revolutionary 鈥渟lide-sweep鈥� packer in 1959 with the release of the iconic 2R Packmaster. Boasting an 800 to 1,000 pounds per cubic yard crushing ability, the 2R could demolish anything with its powerful packer and dump twice as much residential waste as a similar sized Gar Wood body. At the time of the 2R鈥檚 release in 1959, rear loaders were not made with a full eject option and had no push-out blade to help back-pack the load, so the 2R was originally a hoist body. Heil was actually the first company to make a full eject rear loader with the release of their Collectomatic Mark II a year later. Leach answered with their 鈥減ush-out鈥� system in 1962, which relied on the ejection blade to be clamped to a bar that ran the entire length of the body rather than the multi-stage cylinder of its competitors. Unique among the industry, it was slow and the clamping cylinder would often slip. Initially, the 2R was a slow seller, being so far ahead of its time. One of the first markets to realize the potential of this powerful truck were the private contractors in the New York City area and for the next decade, the 2R had no competition.
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The Rivals Answer 鈥� Is It Good Enough?
City Tank was well known in the New York market, having locked down the DSNY contract for more than a decade with their escalator style Roto-Pac compactor. In 1957 they had delivered their 1,000th body to the City, however that technology was already 20 years old and by 1960 the industry was moving to the batch rear loader. Recognizing they needed to remain relevant, they released their answer to the landmark 2R in 1964 with their Load Master LM-100 series. Featuring the same 2yd hopper found in the 2R, City Tank used a modified version of the Leach 鈥渟lide-sweep鈥� concept with an L-shaped sweep panel which reduced the arch between fully closed and open shortening the packer cycle time. Shortly after, City Tank released a smaller version of the LM-100 series and called it the LM-300. In the late 1960s, the DSNY ordered more than 400 LM-320 (the last two number denoting body size) bodies and City Tank had once again established itself in the NYC market.
The Contender: Loadmaster LM-400
As the 1970s came, City Tank was enjoying success with their LM-100 and 300 series bodies; however,, the Leach 2R still reigned supreme as the most powerful rear load packer. To drive home this point, Leach had released a dealer video showing the 2R crushing and compacting a Volkswagen Beetle. This removed all doubt and only validated why the private contractors doing demolition in New York loved that truck. The Load Master bodies, while able to handle residential bulk with little effort, were no match at 600 pounds per cubic yard for the high-compaction crushing ability of the 2R. City Tank realized they needed to remedy that and by 1972 released their answer.
Using the LM-100 series bodies as their template, City Tank created a heavily reinforced hi-tensile steel body with heavy box bracing, making it available in a 25 and 31yd version. They beefed up the sweep panel with three thick-knee braces, making it resemble a giant claw. Mated with gigantic 7鈥� diameter cylinders to actuate the sweep panel, it could now crush anything in the large 2.5yd hopper. City Tank called this monster the LM-400 and put it toe to toe with the 2R on the streets of New York City.
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Will The Judges Reach A Decision?
With these two bodies going now going head to head, some haulers stuck with the proven 2R while some started buying the LM-400. To this day you can still find original 2R and LM-400s roaming the streets of New York City consuming anything put in the hopper. For the next two decades, these two companies fought to prove they had the highest compaction and toughest rear loader on the market. Was there a clear winner in this battle? Like most questions of this nature, it is all a matter of perspective and whom you talk to!
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Zachary Geroux is a historian, photographer and owner of Refuse Truck Photography. He lives in Western Washington with his wife where he currently works full time for the Air Force and has been driving garbage truck off and on for the past nine years. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit .
Many thanks to Eric V. at Classic Refuse Trucks whose years of knowledge and documentation has been an inspiration to me since CRT came online in 2004. Visit the Leach and Loadmaster albums at to read a complete history of these amazing companies and be sure to stop by the Refuse Truck Photography Facebook page to join the conversation on this month鈥檚 article.
