Garbage container

Since I've lived in the U.S., I have experienced a few(or maybe a lot) of surprises that were different from my country.
One of them is the garbage pickup from residents in San Diego. A large truck from waste managenent company goes around rumbling loudly once a week and collects garbage. We usually keep our own garbage container inside a garage and bring it out of the garage to be collected only on Wednesday. But I was wondering how it could be collected by a worker because the container was too big and heavy to be lifted by a person. The height of the container is approx. 1.3 m.
Unlike the garbage pickup in Japan where garbages are picked up by hand, I figured out that the truck here had metal arms that came out, grabbed the container, lifted it up and flipped it over on the back of the truck. Ah! there it is. Everything can be done only by machine here. I think American people are good at inventing anything that makes them have an easy life or be lazy ^^

This goes off the topic a little bit, but the other day, the strange thing happened when I was about to leave my house. Our garbage container which should have been there disappeared. I first thought someone took it into their garage by mistake, so waited and waited; however, no one didn't put it back. I assumed nobody didn't want our container... it's not such a beautiful and valuable thing that you can make a mint. Only thing that I could think of was that the garbage truck ate it. I called the WM company and explained the situation. They consented to give me the other one readily. I made out that the worker drop it into the truck and it's not unusual. Just tell me what happened from now on!!!!!