Severe-duty disaster relief
First Response Team lends heavy-lifting hand
Tad Agoglia and his crew arrived at what was left of Haiti within a week of the 2010 earthquake that left large swaths of Port-au-Prince in shambles. The team used their Cat excavator and Peterbilt dump truck to clear rubble for a medical clinic, and along the way Agoglia was struck by the opportunity to fill a vast need. “I began to realize no one organization can fix everything, but it’s extremely important we all make a contribution,” he says.
For nearly five years, that’s been the essence of Agoglia’s charity work with his First Response Team of America (firstresponseteam.org). In 2007, after a tornado tore through Greensburg, Kan., Agoglia used heavy equipment from his own for-profit hurricane cleanup contracting business to help residents and business owners in ways other organizations couldn’t.
“I saw a need for heavy lifting,” Agoglia says. “I wanted to take what I had and see if I could assist.” By 2009, after serving as first responders on the scene of at least 18 storms, the First Response Team officially became a nonprofit. Companies like Caterpillar, Peterbilt and chainsaw maker Stihl began donating critical equipment for Agoglia’s efforts.
Agoglia is adding equipment owners and truck drivers from his Pennsylvania hometown to the First Response team of seven people.
– Amanda Bayhi
Power, versatility in refuse truck line
Freightliner Trucks brought its line of severe-duty trucks spec’d for the waste-haul market to the WasteExpo show in Las Vegas, Nev. Featured trucks included:
• The new 114SD compressed natural gas-powered truck with a McNeilus 25-yard rear loader body;
• Two 114SD diesels, one with an Amrep roll-off and the other with a SwapLoader SL-505 hook lift/20-yard container;
• The 108SD with a 25-yard Heil rear loader; and
• A Business Class M2 with a stand-up right-hand drive conversion and an Automizer automated side loader body.
“The waste industry is changing,” says Mark Faro, Freightliner’s vocational segment manager for product marketing. “The private market wants productivity, and the government market is focused on versatility, but everybody has to be smart with their purchases in today’s economy. These are versatile hard-working trucks.”
As an example, Faro pointed to the SwapLoader hook lift upfit outfitted by Western Truck Fab in San Francisco. SwapLoader Sales Manager Matt White says the configuration gives the 
114SD the ability to handle “unlimited applications. It can pick up a construction site waste container in the morning and haul a water sprayer or a sander in the afternoon.”
Paccar MX tough-tested with aggregate hauler
Keith Redden’s retirement dream was to start a trucking firm. “I said if I owned six trucks, I could make a living,” Redden says. Since starting in 2003 with three used Kenworths from a home base in Floyd’s Knob, Ind. (across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky.), his K Redden Trucking is up to 24 power units. “I enjoy it more every day,” he says.
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