Truck Transport

Little Is Known About Hauling Garbage and Food in the Same Vehicles Gao ID: RCED-90-161 June 28, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the practice of transporting municipal solid waste in multipurpose trucks that may also be used to carry consumer goods, such as food.

GAO found that: (1) over the past 2 years, municipalities in the Northeast have dramatically increased the amount of waste trucked to out-of-state landfills; (2) New Jersey reported that at least 32 out-of-state landfills have accepted truckloads of its garbage; (3) multipurpose trucks transport about 85 percent of all meat and fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the United States; (4) as the number and capacity of local landfills decrease, the demand for long-distance transport of garbage increases, and with it the likelihood of cross-hauling food and garbage; (5) federal health and food officials said they have no knowledge of any documented contamination having occurred in the United States from transporting food in trucks that previously carried garbage; (6) federal health and food officials said that because they have found no instances of transport-related contaminants, their inspectors do not test trucks for contaminants; and (7) inspectors focus where experience has shown that food contamination might likely occur, such as food preparation, and would test a truck only if contamination were linked to it.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.