Beginnings: The Dempster Dumpster
George Roby Dempster* was born in 1887 to Scottish & Irish immigrants. By age sixteen he had a job running a locomotive (while not in school), having previously worked various railroad jobs in Virgina. As a young adult, Dempster later worked as an equipment operator on the Panama Canal project, and in the early 1930's he formed a construction company with his brothers back home in Knoxville. It was during this time that Dempster developed a novel device for the lifting and transporting of portable storage containers which would be of great significance not only to the refuse collection industry, but to the betterment of sanitation practices in general.
The first Dempster Dumpster lifts were employed by the family company on their construction sites, and consisted of a hydraulic hoist mounted to motor truck whereby open top buckets could be engaged, lifted and transported. The device also allowed for emptying of the shallow buckets by simply tipping them as they were held in the raised position by the hoist. First patented in February 1935, the device began to attract the attention of rival operators and before long Dempster Brothers Incorporated was in the truck equipment business.
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