Matchbox Freightliner M2 106 Vacuum Septic Truck

This matchbox model has working parts

A vacuum truck or vacuum tanker is a tank truck that has a pump and a tank. The pump is designed to pneumatically suck liquids, sludges, slurries, or the like from a location (often underground) into the tank of the truck. The objective is to enable transport of the liquid material via road to another location. Vacuum trucks transport the collected material to a treatment or disposal site, for example a sewage treatment plant.

A common material to be transport is septage (or more broadly: fecal sludge) which is human excreta mixed with water, e.g. from septic tanks and pit latrines). They also transport sewage sludge, industrial liquids, or slurries from animal waste from livestock facilities with pens.

Vacuum trucks can be equipped with a high pressure pump if they are used to clean out sewers from sand.

Commercial vacuum trucks which collect fecal sludge usually have a volume of 10–55 cubic metres (350–1,940 cu ft). However various smaller versions for specialized applications or low-resource settings can be found with tanks as small as 500 litres (110 imp gal; 130 US gal).