One Auckland rubbish truck has lived up to the nickname dump truck.

In a strange scene, a rubbish collection driver on Waterloo Rd in Milford has brought a bin crashing down through the roof of a parked Blue Bubble taxi.

Olivia Moore, a student at nearby Carmel College, was moving her car out of a parking spot just behind the truck when the arm that picks up the bin came down with a bang.

"I thought, 'Oh crap', because I saw it happening in front of my eyes," she told the Herald.

The driver of the truck quickly jumped out, looking shocked as Moore could see rubbish spilling from the bin into the car through its smashed rear windscreen.

He was still there trying to get the truck's arm lifted and sort out the mess one hour later, Moore said, although she didn't notice if the taxi's owner had come to the scene.

She posted a photo of the unusual crash on the Browns Bay North Shore Facebook page where it quickly became swamped by commenters.

When asked if she'd ever seen anything like it, Moore said, "No way."

But another commenter, university student Monique Neal, said the same thing had happened to her recently.

She told the Herald she had been woken one morning by a knock on her door from a distraught rubbish truck driver.

The driver pointed to her own car where the lowering arm of the rubbish truck had brought down a bin that smashed her front and back windscreens and left her boot "all crooked".

"I'd only been awake for three minutes and I was so shocked that I wasn't upset - it was only later that day that I became upset."

To make matters worse, Neal had a university exam that day.

"I could have done without that added stress."

Neal said the truck driver had forgotten to lower the arm holding the rubbish bin, and apparently when the truck drives forward the arm then automatically lowers - that was how it had caught her car.

The damage was so bad, her car, which she had bought only one month before, was a write-off.

The worst part was that it took the rubbish truck's insurance company one month to deem her car a write-off and then they gave her $500 less than she had paid for it.

Nevertheless, she didn't hold a grudge against the rubbish truck driver.

"He was absolutely distraught, I actually felt so bad for him."