By Ron Barnett, USA TODAY

A couple of years ago, when Jim Oswald was an IT consultant for the city of Clemson, S.C., he and his colleagues in the

public works department started talking trash.

Even before gas prices went to $4 a gallon, they were looking for ways for the city to save fuel on garbage collection.

Trucks were burning gas driving around looking for big items too large to be collected on regular routes.

Oswald and Taji Richardson came up with the idea for a GPS device that would give drivers who handled the regular

 routes a touch screen on which they could note where the big items were located. Trucks picking up the large items

 would know exactly where to go.

"When we saw it, we said, Jim you've got a product here," Clemson City Administrator Rick Cotton said. Cotton says the

devices, which went live in May 2007, are saving his small college town about 350 gallons of diesel a month.

"There's lots of cities just like us that need this technology," he said.

An increasing number of cash-strapped cities, in a move to cut fuel costs, is in the process of adding the Global

Positioning System technology to their garbage pickup:

• In South Carolina, Mount Pleasant and Newberry have the devices, Oswald said. Spartanburg was expected to

Install it this month, said city spokeswoman Susan Schneider. The Charlotte, suburb of Fort Mill, S.C., has it in the budget

, said Justin Krueger, assistant public works director.

• The Georgia Municipal Association just signed a deal to market the technology to that state's 536 municipalities, said

Spokeswoman Amy Henderson. "There's definitely some excitement among our city officials," she said.

The Toccoa, Ga., city commission recently voted to spend $17,000 for three units, and City Manager Billy Morse said he

 expects to make that up in fuel savings in three years.

"It seemed so simple we wondered why we didn't think of it before," he said.

• Tom Spicer, sanitation director for the city of Danville, Va., said his city is looking to start with the devices after the

Company finishes an upgrade that will allow large debris and garbage pickup on the same day.

"I think fuel usage-wise it's a really smart system," he said.

Keith Howard, of the American Public Works Association's solid waste management committee and deputy director

 of the Lee County (Fla.) Solid Waste Division in Fort Myers, said improving efficiency is the buzz among public and private

 sector garbage operators, especially in light of higher gas prices.

"Given the fuel prices, I would not be surprised if some of the waste companies as well communities that handle

waste are looking more seriously at this type of system," he said.

Milwaukee is looking at similar technology to map such things as parking lot code violations and snow and ice on

sidewalks,  said David Sivyer, of the city's department of public works.

Oswald and Richardson originally based the economic feasibility of their system on diesel cost of $2.75 a gallon.

"So this is paying for itself more than we ever anticipated it would when we were developing it," Oswald said, with

diesel cost  jumping by about $2 per gallon since then.

Barnett reports for The Greenville (S.C.) News.