Trash trucks with hydraulic brakes, mechanical arms and lift gates;
Side loaders, back loaders, cans and bins
So many shapes and colors to love and play with

Before kids I was completely ignorant to this trashy subculture.

But once your kid is in it, it’s hard to escape. Warning: once family and friends know about your kid’s trash truck love, it’s safest to accept that they’ll likely be receiving some level of trashy paraphernalia for the foreseeable future. This same logic applies to anything your kid loves. How my daughter has come to own an entire village of Little People (and animals). Frozen and Tangled are her favorites.Yes, they do make a trash truck, and she loves it.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your POV) the trash genre is not just toys.

It’s basically hundreds of independent contractors working for Big Trash, spreading the word. You can find clothes, toys, books, tv shows, YouTube channels and events centered around kids connecting to these beloved trucks.

I’m not sure how it all started and I definitely can’t say that I’ve loved every minute. But the earliest memories I have are “Trash Truck Thursdays.” This was a sacred day where we’d wake up at 6:30am (not my personal choice), make Betty Crocker Blueberry Muffins and sit on the porch waiting for the big aqua trucks to turn down our street. Soon after, the collection started.

At first it was one or two we could find at local targets. And on his 2nd Christmas he received his first Bruder, a side loader, from his Uncle. He got pajamas and a t-shirt from us. The rest is history.

Below is just a small taste of what the collection has become. It doesn’t even do justice to the various cans (Option 1, #2, #3) we have.

Some days 80% of our conversations revolve around trash. I can’t see a truck in the wild and not copy my son’s cadence of whispering trash truck. It doesn’t matter what I want or like, it’s about him, them. And my Son, ergo-de-facto, my daughter, loves trash trucks.