Read the newspaper or look online and you will see hundreds of stories about communities not having their garbage collected on-time by their service providers. An armchair CEO analysis would just assume laziness, but there is more to it.
This short article will explain some of the challenges waste management companies have been facing and how we are able to do better than most.
Why trash is not being picked up
Like all businesses in 2021, the waste management industry has faced a shortage of employees. Long work hours, intense physical demands, and CDL requirements hit our industry especially hard.
On top of this, supply chain disruptions have made getting parts to service & repair collection vehicles nearly impossible to get leaving trucks out of service.
The industry has responded to these issues by increasing employee wages and investing in newer collection vehicles. One main problem remains in the garbage business over all other businesses, though.
Always Running Behind
In the garbage business, most collection vehicles are scheduled to run dedicated routes 5 to 6 days per week. When delays occur even for one day, the drivers and trucks must “double up” the next day in order to try to catch up.
If a driver is out for multiple days or a truck is broken down long-term, this can wreak havoc on things. Trash collection vehicles can carry between 8-12 tons of garbage per load. That is the average amount of trash picked up per day per truck. Imagine if everyone had double the amount of garbage! The garbage never stops being produced, so it continues to pile up.
Even if the truck & driver is sent back out after 1 week of being down, it would take over 1 month to catch up with the extra volume of garbage!
How we are different
We are not the best trash collection service in the world. Every business has their flaws, but we do one thing right: operations. We do not over-provision our routes, drivers and equipment.
For example, if we need 4 trucks and drivers running 5 days per week, we own 2 extra backup trucks and employ a backup driver. This way, if an employee calls out sick or a truck breaks down, it can be handled while we stay on-schedule for our valued customers.
The reason why smaller garbage services such as Prestige Disposal were not as affected by the issues that hit the large corporations is simple, we are smaller.
For example, if a driver quits suddenly or a truck goes down, the owner of the business can run an overnight shift in a spare truck in order to get & stay caught up. The CEO of a multi-billion dollar waste management company will not do that!
At Prestige Disposal, we practice what we preach. We have drivers quit, trucks break down, and things happen just like every other garbage collection service in the Wilkes-Barre area. The difference is that we do WHATEVER it takes in order to stay on-schedule and keep our customers happy.
