Honeywagons

>> Speaker A: But they bring this big tank truck, and they slurp up all the nasty turd bits, like some preteen slurping their cup of noodle in the middle of the day. Or Boba. I think Boba's a better image, especially if you get one of those milky bobas that's got, like, weird fish eyes and milk. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms. This is

the last episode of January here in the new year. And so at the top of the episode, I want to put out again to you. A reminder to right now, go rate and review the show. Uh, if you are listening to this podcast right now in Apple podcasts or Spotify, uh, you can actually go and rate

and review the podcast in the catcher. Uh, you can rate us on podbean, and if your podcatcher has ratings, leave that rating and then shoot me an email so that way I know it, because to my knowledge, there's not a lot of other ones that do ratings. Um, but for every rating that you leave, we will be donating, ah, a dollar to the wounded warriors and to living water international. And if you live a written review of the podcast, we'll bump that up a couple of bucks. We're going to try

to grow this bathroom community. A way you do that, uh, is by leaving the show a rating. It helps people find the show. Uh, and us, uh, doing those donations is our way of thanking you for leaving those ratings and reviews. So go do that now. Uh, I also want to talk about, back in October, we discussed Frankenberry diarrhea. Now, what this was, was Frankenberry, uh,

stool. Was this phenomenon back in the, I want to say seventy s or eighty s. Um, when Frankenberry first came out, it had a food dye in it that dyed the little kids poops just bright red. Uh, and so much so that when parents saw this, uh, many of them took their kids to the doctor to have them checked, thinking that they were bleeding out the anus, uh, which you don't want anytime you got. Yeah. Uh, but I need to tell you that there is a new monster in town. The first thing is this. Oh, gosh.

Uh, if you have been in the cereal aisle recently, you may have noticed that they have begun to, quote unquote, update some of our beloved serial, uh, mascots. I listen to a serial podcast, uh, and they've talked about this. But as they update these mascots, they make me more and more annoyed because we have these beloved mascots that are iconic in what they are. And the changes that they are making to them are things that I cannot get behind.

Like, they're kind of making them just more, my opinion, kind of claymationy. And they need to leave my serial mascots alone. Like, first it was Tony the tiger. Years ago, they screwed with Tony. They made him kind of like bulging m. Uh, I think Tony the tiger might have been the first furry. Um, and then they swapped up flipping two can Sam and gave him a woke beak, made him into some abomination. It's bad enough. And then they went and screwed with the captain. Old crunch, he's not even a

captain. I think he's like an admirable or admiral or something. But leave Mr. Crunch alone. Just quit changing the mascots. They're fine. They don't need changed. I promise they don't. But I got on some, uh, Captain Crunch's oops all berries. Now, I don't know what, because I've eaten oops. You know, I've eaten oops all berries in the past. This isn't my first pass at oops all berries, but something about this batch, either my tummy has adapted negatively to the oops all berries,

or they have changed something in the batch. Because these oops all berries gave me the most green poops. It looked like grinch fingers just floating around in the toilet. Uh, it's the most green I've ever seen it. But I digress. But not too much, because something I was acutely thankful for in that moment. As know you flush. Sometimes people wonder, hunter, how did you know? But everybody checks their

poop. Like when you poop, you gotta take a peek back there and see what the bowl's looking like. It's just part of life. It should be noted I'm not the only one, uh, who's shazzing. Uh, is looking more like St. Patty's day when they snatch the oops all berries. It's a thing on the Internet. Uh, it's not just me, in case you're wondering, but, um, something I was thankful for as I'm staring at these green semi logs. Uh, is that little metallic flusher off to the side of the toilet, man. Uh, what

a pal. Because without that, then I would be tasked with dealing with this now puddle of green filth that I have just produced with my disgusting backside. Now, uh, in the past, we have discussed some of the options available to people throughout time and history to help the turds go away. There has been things and one common factor in all those. If you don't have a way to transport it away from you, it usually goes into some sort of a vessel, whether it's a pan or a pit

or what have you. And the main concerning factor when this happens is storage. Now, we have a storage problem here at our house. I have what I would like to say is a more than healthy assortment of board games. Uh, and one of the things that happens when you have that assortment of board games is you must store them. And, man, I got some shelving and we got bins and all this stuff. But I'm a big fan of bins. Uh, the Legos go in the bin. The nerf wars go in the bin. Uh, it's just

good. Bins are great. Get yourself a few bins. Storage wars, storage problems solved. But whether crap storage is a long term storage, such as a septic tank or a cesspit, or if it's a shorter term storage, such as privy pits or porta potties, the reality is when someone eats a big bowl of oops, all berries, God forbid they peanut butter that bowl first. Don't peanut butter your bowl, friends. For those who don't know, here we are. You take a spoon and you just, like, smear peanut butter on

the inside of your bowl. And then you put the cereal in, and then you put the milk in. It's delicious. Uh, you get a little bite of, like, little peanut butter action all throughout the bowl. It's just a good time. But when someone eats oops. All berries before bed, and they drop the Grinch surprise. Someone has got to deal with it. And today we're taking a roundabout stroll back through history, where eventually we will discuss honey wagons. Today in the year 2024, not three, four

of our lord. It takes me a few weeks to adjust to the four. Uh, I find myself writing the incorrect year, um, for some time after the new year has struck, which normally is fine, but I have to fill out, like, special education documentation. My secretary has to call me out every now and then. It's fine. But today when we find a porta potty, there is a lovely blue lake at the bottom that you skied it into. When that lake gets full, you usually have to make a call.

Who are you going to call for someone to come out and service the porta potty? Now, when they do that, they are definitely judging you based on how fast you filled it up. It's like, I was there last week. There's no way you filled blue Lake deluxe in but one week. But they bring this big tank truck, and they slurp up all the nasty turd bits, like some preteen slurp in their cup of noodle in the middle

of the day. Or Boba. I think Boba's a better image, especially if you get one of those milky bobas that's got the weird fish eyes and milk. Teens are so weird. Like, they care so much about things like Boba, yet they will drink monster energy drinks. I don't understand it. And they'll just French kiss each other in public, these flipping teens. They just french kiss each other. Just stop freaking quit it. You need to french kiss.

French kiss. French kiss. French kissing goodbye. You know what I'm saying? But that truck comes and slurps up the nasty bits, and that truck is called a honeywagon. We need to take a brief look at how we got honey wagons. Whose idea was this? How did we get here? And for God's sakes, why are we calling them honey wagons? Much like many inventions in history, it starts at multiple points and converges onto an idea that just kind of makes all our lives a little

bit better. Before there was plumbing, as was noted, you often would just skeet it into the street or a pan and dump it out in the field. Fertilizer. As sanitation became even more of a concern, people began digging. Privy pits. Shout out privy. We see you, uh, using privy chambers. Hey, hey. Two for two. Or using cess pits or privy houses. And this was great. You could play stick ball where you didn't take a poop. Like you didn't have to play.

You smack the ball, you're running the bases, and you just step in. Nasty big Tony's fat deuce that he slopped 2 hours earlier with the digging of privy pits and cesspits, you no longer had to see it. It was out of sight, out of mind. But here's the thing about these holes. No matter how big your hole is, it can fill up. When you fill a jar, you got yourself your ball, your ball. Mason m type m, I guess. Ball jar, mason jar. I think

that's conflicting brands. Mason jar is, I think it's like Kleenex, where even if you get puffs, plus you'll call it a Kleenex, it's kind of one of those, like, name brands have become the thing type thing. Um, but when you get your jar and you fill it up with M and Ms, you just keep pouring. If it overflows, everything is great because it's m and Ms, and they're delicious. But if you begin to fill a crevice or a hole with human crap. People are upset if it begins to overflow because it is

poop. It's poop, and it's meant to stay in the hole. Now, as these privy pits and privy chambers and cess pits filled up, you had a handful of options, really. One is you can cover it and hope for the best. And this definitely happened. But as time went on, digging a new pit, just covering the first one and digging a new pit began to be too much of a hassle. And, uh, it's a sliding scale because you're going to run out of space to bury your

crap. Or you would dig one in a primo location that wouldn't seep into your water supply and give you terrible, terrible call. Oh, wait. They hadn't figured that out at this point, but you didn't want to upset the balance of your nightly routine. So they began to realize, we have got to get the crap out of the hole. What we need to explore today is how we arrived at, ah, the modern day honey bucket vacuum trucks that suck it

out. In the early days, it was probably no more than people shoveling out their own waste and hurting it down the road to a place to dump again, fertilizer. More on that location later. Uh, but as time goes on, people get tired of this process. And so, as is usually the case when human beings have a job that they need to do and they begin to be tired of doing it themselves, they say, aha, ah, I will pony up the cash to pay someone to do it. And that, my friends, is public edge. No. Uh,

but they begin to pay someone. And I imagined this started as some kid trying to make some extra cash and his dad signs him up for what would have been probably the worst job on this planet. Uh, I'm here in the Willamete valley in the state of Oregon, and we just got an ice storm. Now, for those of you who are not from the area, uh, I grew up in Montana, so I know snow. Snow's fine. We love snow. Um, but this is not snow. I cannot stress, this is not

snow. This is ice. And what I mean by that is my car had almost two inches, almost of ice just on it. You could not open the doors. I had to take some deicing spray just to get into my car. It's absolutely wild. But this ice just freezes over everyone's driveway. And in a normal world with snow, this is primo money making opportunity for young, non lazy teens. But there's these two kids in our neighborhood that were just. You could tell they were just going house to house just to

make some cash. And they like, I don't know this, but I saw them working, and I'm like, oh, partner, you do not know what you have signed up for because you cannot shovel this ice. You are chipping this ice. You would be better equipped with a pickaxe than a snow shovel. Um, but these two kids were on this driveway for hours, just chipping at miss ice. And I imagine that that is a lot like the early days of these people who went to empty other people's

cesspits. There arose then a job where a person would pull up in a wagon. This wagon would later be drawn by a horse. Uh, and they would use buckets to scoop and dump the waste into a tub on the back of the wagon. Now, I cannot stress, this is a tub, not a tank, a tub. Now, they had ways to do. But again, we're starting out weird. I don't know if you've ever been to summer camp, but just think back. It's summer. The mosquitoes are just out and just slurping your

blood. Uh, maybe summer camps where you go and try to lock down that crush for the next year. Who knows? Summer camp, maybe you're going to get to pie one of the counselors in the face. Who knows? Maybe you'll encounter Sam squamsh out there in the woods. But one of the things that happens at summer camp is you play the bucket game. And if you've ever been to summer camp, you've played the bucket game. And what it is, is you're scooping ice cold water, usually from a stream. That's

what makes it ice cold. It's colder than the frosts of freaking frost world. Freaking Elsa and Anna's frozen backyard wonderland. You know what I'm saying? That's probably. Don't search for that. Um, but you have to scoop the water, and then the teams pass the bucket down the line, wherein they dump it into a tub. Now, you will know if you have participated in this activity, something very specific about transporting liquids in this way, and that's

you're going to spill it. This game is designed to promote and produce sloshing, and that's all great at summer camp. You want to slosh cold water on you at summer camp because it's freaking hot and the cabins don't have air conditioning. But in 17 and 18 hundreds, when it's hot and the liquid is human sludge built up over the last month or so, you are not going to want to spill that. Do not spill that bucket. And then you dump it into this tub that, as the horse pulls it down. They didn't have

paved roads. It's sloshing everywhere. There's turds going everywhere. Smooth ride. Not likely. I'm sure everything stayed in the tub. Yeah, right. But this wagon was the first time, this horse drawn wagon was the first time that they began to use the term honeywagon. This begs the question, why honey wagon? Why not really? Filthy, gross, filth, butthole juice wagon? Because that's what it is, from what I

can tell. But from what I can tell, they began to call it a honey wagon because of the color of the liquid inside this tub. Absolutely foul. Horse drawn honey wagons. That might not be a bad, like, punk rock band, metal band name horse drawn honey wagon. But we're still a far reach from the trucks that we see come slurp up our porta potty liquids today. And one thing that is different is the

presence of a horse. And to swap that out, the invention of a truck brought two specific innovations to the technology. U in the mid 18 hundreds, german engineer Gottlieb Daimler nailed it, began, um, working on combustion engines, and began to transition his engineering from the world of steam to the world of machines powered by fuel. He went to work for the machine and fabric. Machine and fabric Daniel Straub. Now,

I butchered it. I don't know why I went like Samurai on that, but it's machine and fabric. Daniel Straub, where he worked on mills and turbines. He became the factory manager for auto in sigh and brought his pal Maybach on as chief designer while he worked there. Now, these two men, Gottlieb Daimler and his buddy Maybach, went on to work on the largest manufacturer of stationary engines at the time. In 1872, this company invented a gas fueled, compressed charge

four stroke engine. After four years of effort, it was believed, and was probably correct in time that it would replace steam. Daimler was fired from auto, and Maybach resigned, following his friend. These two left and began to work on an engine that burned a carbon based. It was eventually reworked to run at about 900 rpms. Now, this engine or that compound, that carbon based, I think it's Ligron leg roin. I don't know. I don't know how to pronounce any of this crap.

But it was later switched out for gasoline and would appear to be attached to a vehicle running at about 7 nearby, where Daimler and Maybach are working on this engine. Carl Benz had patented a similar automobile in 1886 called the motor waggin. That's german for motor wagon. In 1889, the first Daimler Maybach automobile was built, called the Stallrad wagon stall radwagen, Stalrad wagen, and was influenced by actually early bicycle designs. We've come full circle. I get it because of the wheels.

It's funny. Oh, I had to have my bride bring me, um, a little hot tea. You got to keep the voice nice for you. Daimler reiterated and reiterated on his stall rad wagon until 1896, he invented the Daimler motor lost wagon, the world's first truck. And you might hear all this about these german gentlemen running around making vehicles and think, so what? I thought we were talking about honey wagons. Well, we just found

the wagon. The truck was special in that it could carry and haul a load without seeing a significant drop in speed. Again, 7 mph. We're not breaking land speed records here, but it is said to be able to haul between one and a half to five tons, depending on the model. Originally, this truck was designed to haul needed gasoline in tanks on the back of it for use in the ever rising gasoline use. However, as you might guess, it became used for so much more.

As they began to transport gasoline and water to the front lines of World War I, another somewhat wartime related invention posed a, ah, different problem. Portable outhouses. Shout out to our outhouse episode. Go check it out. Uh, these arose in shipyard docks and naval yards around the time of World War I, and they were an attempt to increase productivity in the shipyards. Now, much like the sets pits and privy pits and things dug to deal with waste in their homes, these outhouses

filled up. And again, they may have had a young lad come scoop it out, but when these were placed in war areas, there's no young lad coming to empty those. They would need to be dumped in another way. These early stalrod Vogans ended up hauling more than just gasoline. Beer and water were commonly hauled on these trucks. But in time, people began to put containers of human honey in the back. You know

what I'm saying? Human honey. Thus, the honey wagon took a new form, no longer pulled by a beast, but powered by gas. And it's interesting to think that though you didn't need a horse to power these wagons, the horse drawn were probably faster for a while. Again, the automobiles were moving at, ah, a whopping 7 miles an hour, and probably slowed a bit when having a full sloshy tub of poo in the back. And that makes me start to wonder why people would opt for this.

I mean, I get not having a horse, but the gas wagons couldn't be cheaper. And you're telling me that there's more people with a gas wagon than a horse? We should start calling cars gas wagons. In short, they began to use them to transport waste back in wartime. This helped deal with the growing amount of sludge that was in bunkers and frontline areas. But, alas, the crap tanks are now being hauled by trucks. But here's the

thing. The hauling of the poo, once it was in the tubs or tanks, not the major concern. I believe the major concern is the lad who has to go scooping out the pit and handle the bucket on the way back to dump it. And I think if you asked that guy if the gas powered truck helped things out, he'd say, well, I mean, I guess, but I'm still sloshing it all over myself. Life is better, but it's not good. But the next little slice of historical invention really changes the game for that kid.

Jumping back to Daimler. While Daimler was in England, uh, completing his work on the gas powered truck in England, an inventor named Hubert Cecil Booth, after encountering lectures on the internal combustion engine, began work on another gasoline powered, horse drawn invention, a little invention Hubert called the puffing Billy. Now, while this may have been the nickname of the kid who always got caught doing nefarious drugs in the Bathroom, Hubert's puffing Billy was a gas powered vacuum

cleaner. You heard me, gasoline powered vacuum cleaners. Shortly thereafter, he came up with an electric model, which is an idea we may be more familiar with. And he began offering cleaning services via pull up vans featuring the name the british vacuum cleaner company BVCC. The term vacuum was assigned to help him market the machine. You know, it turns out the puffing Billy didn't catch on the way he'd

hoped. But much like I think gas wagons is a good trend that we need to introduce for cars, I think a good new approach to the vacuum would be to just call it the puffing billy. Go get your. Hey, can you go use the puffing billy? Oh, yeah, I was puffing billying my floor. That's hard to make that into a verb. And this service that he provided, if you've ever had your carpets cleaned professionally,

it's similar. They pull the vacuum hose through the window, vacuum hose your house out for you, and then roll it up and roll out. This is mostly because the machines itself were huge and really bulky. They were also really loud, uh, these puffing Billy british vacuum cleaner company vans m that would pull up with this. They're like an enclosed wagon with a huge vacuum cleaner and a hose that comes out the side. But they would start these up, and the horses nearby would freak

out. Often when these are mounted on horse drawn wagons, it scares the horses that they're attached to. It's a whole thing. But the british navy used these vacuums to begin to clean up barracks and other wartime living spaces. Now, Hubert Cecil Booth, we're going to call him Hubie for short. He, uh, was offered knighthood for his services to the country and his invention of the puffing billy the vacuum, uh,

and like a gangster, he turned him down. His vacuum was patented in 1901, and he founded the company goblin to sell his vacuums to the public. Now, this company and namesake lives on as a maker of pneumatic tube systems. Choir space. So you have these trucks transporting tanks of gasoline to wartime, and they decide to fill the tanks with poop to clean things up a bit simultaneously. Maybe even parked right behind it sits the vacuum truck. And it was then they decided

to combine the two. The problem is the truck had to be running, and also that running engine would need to run the vacuum. And they shared a thing, and there was a power consumption concern. It would seem that more power was needed. More power. Uh, but it was a means, rather, of needing to transfer the energy to another source of energy or a

tool. Now, for some time at this time, farmers had been concerned with this idea, but it wasn't until 1918 that the international Harvester company came up with a PTO tractor to transfer the power. Power transfer something of the tractor into various farming implements, often pulled behind the tractor. These were not perfected on further until the 1940s. But with perfection

comes suction. In 1945, the cockshut farm equipment company in Ontario, Canada, came up with the first live ptO, allowing the vacuum to work independently of the machinery it was mounted on. Truly, the honey wagon, though today used to suck crap, is a collaborative effort between the fuel industry, the automotive industry, transportation, home cleaning, and farming industries. Ladies and gentle whatevers, the honey wagon.

Today, these trucks with large tanks on the back, vacuums with hoses attached, pull up, they suck up all the nasties, and they roll out and dump that sewage at sewage treatment or safe sewage dumping. The honey wagon is a pretty cool thing. It's a symbol of human ingenuity and human teamwork and collaboration. And I hope you enjoyed this short journey through history with us this afternoon. This also brings us to the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, as

always, follow us on social media. We're at Privycast. Um, all the socials, Reddit, rprivycast. Uh, you can send us an email, privycast@gmail.com. You can follow me. I'm at owlet seven. Leave, uh, us a rating and review. A reminder, the five star options are preferred, and ratings and reviews generate money.

As a thank you for doing so to the Wounded warriors project and living Water International, uh, just given back to them as a thank you for what you have done for us, uh, we would also remind you to, uh, leave us some feedback. We would love to hear from you. If you have a story to share, we would love to reach out and have you on the show. This will bring us to the end of another episode of privy. Thanks so much for being here in my bathroom. Keep pooping in the free world.

Breathe more, push less, own your stank. And now, as always, don't forget to flush.