Maybe, but they still have to drive past the 3rd street cans on the way from the full cans on 2nd street to the full cans on 4th street. I'm thinking windshield time is much larger than emptying time. Basically garbage truck drivers probably spend a lot more time driving than hoisting trash cans.

Its like the mailman argument. If I don't get any mail today, my mailman can't magically teleport past my house. True he does save the time of opening a box and tossing some sorted mail in, but that action only takes a tiny fraction of the time of walking 100 feet past my property. A registered mail transaction takes a LONG time like 5 minutes and if more people got registered mail (or fewer got junk mail) then the ratio would flip and he'd save huge time.