![]() He also meticulously hand-builds customized model garbage trucks to feature in the popular videos he creates for fans of miniatures, one of which has earned nearly 6 million views. This, in addition to the time and resources he has dedicated to necessary travel. Erdman has invested thousands of dollars into the equipment needed to achieve the professional-level production value his videos have come to be known for. Now with a total of more than 31 million views across the over 300 videos he has produced since 2008, the channel has not only allowed him to provide a modest living for his young family but also made him a major player in the greater garbage-truck YouTube genre, where documenting the collection, transportation, and disposal of garbage is no casual business. “When I first started my channel,” he told me, “I never expected it to be even remotely life changing.” Nobody is more surprised than Erdman himself, who joined YouTube as a mere garbage hobbyist. His YouTube channel Thrash ‘N’ Trash Productions, so named for the thrash metal that Erdman favors, has recently begun to generate enough income through ad revenue for him to turn his full professional attention to documenting waste management. But Erdman - now a young husband and new father, residing in southwestern Washington - embodies a more attainable though no less admirable version of the 2015 American dream. ![]() Seven years later, Bieber is an international pop sensation at age 21. In midsummer 2008, at the same time that a 14-year-old Justin Bieber was uploading videos of himself singing to his YouTube account, Erdman, also 14, was uploading amateur videos, under the username TrashMonkey22, that featured play-by-play footage of local garbage trucks on route, set to soundtracks of heavy-metal hits by the likes of Black Sabbath and the extreme metal band Carcass. ![]() For a parent like me, the video is a mesmerizing and oddly soothing tour of the various nondescript residential communities sprawled across the region, each distinguishable only by the colors of its curbside trash barrels and their adjacent lawns. For my preschool-age viewer, the footage represents a greatest-hits montage of the machines that enthrall him. Through his Thrash ‘N’ Trash oeuvre, Erdman has managed to tap into the dual veins that circulate contentment through a family home: toddlers’ utter fascination with trash trucks, and their parents’ equally enthusiastic desire to pacify their kids with inoffensive content. And it completely won me over after he quietly watched “Garbage Trucks: On Route, In Action!” on a loop for the better part of a transatlantic flight this summer. I may not have the same level of connoisseurship as Trashman242, but I am certainly thankful for Erdman’s videos. I first came to his channel, Thrash ‘N’ Trash, by way of my now-2-year-old son, whose fascination with the weekly appearance of our neighborhood trash truck needed to be supplemented with the kind of on-demand trash-truck action I figured I might find on YouTube. thanks for finally uploading one of the WM Portland recycling Labries!!” writes Trashman242. The reviews in the comments are rapturous: “This is the kind of video which dominates all the other garbage truck videos out there it’s a king production,” says MitchellM15. The video has been viewed over 1.8 million times - no surprise, as it was created after multiple fan requests. and curb-sort recyclers that manage waste throughout the Pacific Northwest. Opening with a heavy-metal guitar riff (written and recorded by Erdman), the video features a 19-minute compilation (shot by Erdman) of the front loaders, side loaders. Embedded below this paragraph is a masterpiece of garbage-truck YouTube: “ Garbage Trucks: On Route, In Action!” It’s the work of the 21-year-old man pictured above: Bryn Erdman.
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