Billy Staples

Waste Services Industry: Trash to Treasure

Guys, look at it this way....I spent many years in the biz, residential and mostly commercial in NY metro area. so kinda seen it all from the front to the upper view, either way it smells I have been told. After awhile you don't notice.

this I noticed. It wasn't too long ago, right over the (excuse spelling ) Kosciusko Bridge in brooklyn, around the BQE( for non NYers, just before Manhattan, sat the 2 biggest waste companies in the country, right down the block from each other. One was Waste Management, who in my opinion was the smaller of the 2 and not the big name. down the block, both with their own transfer stations etc, was the pretty and very difficult to do, clean trucks for BFI. Browning Ferris Industries. If you watch movies from the 80's onward, when ever you see dumpsters in it, they are thespecial oclor Blue' of BFI. Ironically, our blue was the blue my company used and I guess mixed or chose whatever, so they called it our company's name 'Blue'. Insignificant bit of oddball news. Whenever you had the prerequisite front end loader (the truck with the forks that empties the container through its roof) is backing out of an alley in a movie chase scene a lot of times its the blue BFI. what I am saying is they were all over the country. I even told my bro in law at the time to check them out as he was into stocks and had money, i was neither, and realistically still aren't!!!

Than one day, it just hit me. where the hell Did BFI go. No more pretty blue containers. They were bought out, taken over, merged, still not sure by or with Waste Management, which immediately became the big kid on the block.

Here is a rule of thumb guys. If a company owns or runs it's own landfills and doesn't have to dump the garbage they pick up in a municipality, they are saving millions. dumping fees were out of control toward the end of the truly 'private' sanitation companies, the mom and pops if you will. Even thought they weren't small or inexpensive to run.
If you have your own landfill, you bring your loaded trucks in, save up to sometimes $1,000 or more if its raining or you are loaded with 'slop'. A garbage term for food from diners(ok outside of NY, Denny's Perkins, waffle house), restaurants, fish places, anyplace where food is thrown into a dumpster, it weighs a considerable amount. At one point we had scales in the truck weighing each container, the dumping fees were out of control
If you went to dump a roll off from a diner or similar to above, example catering halls, where they needed something bigger, they had compacters built into them and you'd pick those bad boys up and flip them around to dump and vice versa, again....some of the heaviest and wear and tear on trucks, drive shafts, tires and universals would snap.


so imagine not paying for that? when you could shop around for the best place if and when your landfill got closed, like all are in NY. Many are still open but for construction debris and guys watch you dump to make sure, no tires, nothing. even clean fill, which you used to dump for free, dirt, top soil etc than it it had one piece of wood you paid for 20 yard roll off of dirt of cement...think of the tonnage.

OK, I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, but that is what killed private sanitation in NY metro area. Anyone recall the infamous garbage barge, that had no place to call home. dumping fees were so outrageous here that well some companies were forced out of business.

the final point is anyone left standing today is no small potatoes. I don't care where they are or if centralized in one area. a small company would have almost an impossible time making it now. the towns wound up taking over routes. Only private companies that filled voids for the WMI, AW and republic etc made it.

as I used to say and tell my boss, especially at raise time...
'there's gold in them there pails'. Nothing could be truer the longer it goes on. Until we go soylent green, there will always be waste.

I bit of an insiders view and I am for speaking tours at bar mitzvahs, sweet sixteens and Holiday parties, not to mention Christenings.

I love the commercials I think for waste mgmt, all the guy does is drive around town, smiling as lights go on and doesn't pick up a damn thing. No slop leaking out the back gate, nothing flying off the roof onto windshields and no rats climbing onto your cab and hanging onto your mirror. ahh the good ole days

Staples

So no such thing as small. Even if you are speaking of in relation to. I've moved on, buy a t-shirt! Support a teamster on a withdrawal card for too many years to count!

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