A fleet of New York City sanitation trucks served as the first line of defense for President Joe Biden on Wednesday as he made an appearance on ABC’s “The View” in Lower Manhattan.
Roughly a dozen Department of Sanitation salt spreaders lined the block around the SoHo building where the daytime talk show is filmed, serving as barricades for the commander in chief, who’s in town this week for the United Nations General Assembly. The movement of the trucks was choreographed by the U.S. Secret Service and the NYPD. The engines of the blazing orange behemoths idled as sanitation workers sat inside watching videos on their phones.
Each salt spreader costs city taxpayers about $271,000 and can hold up to 16 tons of salt and 180 gallons of liquid calcium chloride. The vehicles are normally used to clear snow and ice off streets across the five boroughs.
Wednesday was far from the first time they’ve been deployed as security barriers.
“The practice has been going on for decades,” former Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson said. “It’s been a longstanding security measure for all kinds of events.”
Similar garbage trucks across the country have for years been used to thwart terrorist attacks. The sanitation department sometimes uses a row of heavy dump trucks to protect parade routes and Trump Tower.
As Biden’s motorcade left SoHo later on Wednesday, other salt spreaders operated by sanitation workers sat sentry at various entrances to the secured zone around the U.N. headquarters on Manhattan’s East Side, where the General Assembly will run through the end of the week.
