YONKERS

It weighs 20 tons empty — 45 tons when full — smells a bit racy and has become known as the Yonkers Chomper. Lumbering down a street in southern Yonkers on Monday, it made quick work of the mountain of garbage piled in front of an apartment building and still had room to polish off a few piles down the street.

Children seemed delighted by its saw-toothed jaw and polka-dotted body. Adults tended to warm to it after learning that the whimsical bit of street theater they were watching had not cost taxpayers a thing.

Some cities commission murals to bring art to the masses. Others design sculpture parks. But Yonkers took a different tack last month when it outfitted 6 of its 45 garbage trucks to give residents something less drab to look at each morning. The experiment has been such a success that residents asked to have the truck routes alternated to let the artworks tour the town.

“We’re going to rotate them so more neighborhoods can see them,” said John A. Liszewski, the commissioner of the Public Works Department for this city of about 200,000. He would like to see the rest of his fleet undergo makeovers if his staff can attract more private sponsors.

“I’m becoming the city’s arts commissioner,” Mr. Liszewski joked.

IT was 5 in the afternoon, and the scratched-up green Dodge pickup was stopped at a light at Foster and Remsen Avenues in Canarsie, Brooklyn. A teetering bureau and a load of wooden slats were in back.

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"Bobby, they're dumping!" Officer Fontana shouted. "Go down there!"

A man in a plaid work shirt was tossing planks and slats onto the road. As the Jeep rolled up, he began to tip over the bureau. When it hit the ground, Lieutenant DeRossi said: "O.K. Let's get him."

Lieutenant DeRossi and Officer Fontana are members of the Sanitation Department's Illegal Dumping Task Force, a unit of 35 armed plainclothes officers, former sanitation workers all. And this is their busy season. Construction work and spring cleaning pick up in April and May, generating large amounts of debris; some 21 dumpers' vehicles were impounded in May of last year, a number exceeded only in August.