Hey there, Granger blog readers! It’s time for a pop quiz. What do the following have in common?
- Envy eats nothing but its own heart.
- Faith is the ability to see God in the dark.
- Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
- Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
Celebrity tweets? Advice from the self-help section of the bookstore? Not exactly. If you knew that these are sayings are (or have been) on the back of a Granger garbage truck, good for you! But it wouldn’t be that far off to call them garbage truck tweets or good advice either.
Imagine this scenario. You’re sitting in traffic on the way home from work, behind a long line of cars, waiting on a ridiculously short left turn light. Directly in front of you is a garbage truck. Now if this were a garbage truck from another company, it might add to the unpleasantness of the situation. But it’s not. It’s a Granger garbage truck, so while you’re waiting, you have a nice, uplifting message to read.
How did these garbage truck sayings come about, you may ask? Well, Ron Granger, one of the founders of our company, had the idea of putting Bible verses and inspirational messages on the back of the trucks. He thought if you had to be stuck in traffic behind a garbage truck, you should at least have something nice to read while you’re there. The truck sayings came along very early in our company’s history. In fact, we’ve been placing these messages on our trucks since 1968—for 48 of our 50 years of collecting tomorrow’s energy. That first message was beautiful in its simplicity: Smile, God loves you!
Now occasionally, you may find yourself behind a garbage truck that doesn’t have a truck saying and think, what gives? Though we do our best to place messages on all our trucks, some of them just aren’t conducive because they don’t have a big, brown blank space on the back of them. However, there are enough of them on our front-load and side-load trucks to make for some good reading should you happen to be sitting in a traffic jam.
So the next time you’re driving around town, be on the lookout for a Granger garbage truck. If you’re inspired, let us know!