WasteExpo 2023: Talking challenges and opportunities for haulers

No matter their size or operating footprint, waste and recycling haulers face similar issues.

Hiring and retaining employees, adapting to changes in technology and maintaining a functional fleet are only a handful of the challenges they encounter, and many have found ways to push forward.

At WasteExpo 2023, which was May 1-4 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, four haulers of different sizes from across the U.S. came together to discuss the state of their industry. The session, Hauler Roundtable: Operational Challenges and Opportunities, was moderated by Michael O’Connor, owner and managing partner of Rio Grande Waste Services Inc., based in El Paso, Texas. On the panel were Ken and Tammy Lee, operators of Celebration, Florida-based Celebration Sanitation Services; Coastal Waste & Recycling LLC Vice President of Operations Maurice Nalley; and TJ Troiano, chief operating officer of South Portland, Maine-based Troiano Waste Services Inc.

Maintaining the workforce

The ability to attract and retain employees is a nationwide issue affecting businesses of all types, and the waste management sector is no exception. While companies have different staffing needs, the four panelists agreed that culture counts.

“You treat [employees] right, treat them fair, treat them like family, make them a part of everything that you do, and you communicate with them, and it’s really pretty simple to retain them,” Lee said.

While Lee’s company operates inside Celebration, a suburb of Orlando with a population of just more than 11,000 residents that was designed and built by The Walt Disney World Co., Nalley’s company, Coastal Waste, employs more than 800 people, operates 425 collection and support vehicles and owns and operates 18 facilities in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Despite the differences in the scope of their operations, both found common ground when it came to fostering a positive atmosphere for staff.

Nalley said a strong culture is a distinguishing characteristic of Coastal.

“[Culture] is something a lot of organizations talk about, but we put culture at the forefront of everything we do, and it’s starting to cascade to every part of our organization,” he said.

When it comes to hiring, the panelists expressed different experiences. Lee said he hasn’t had to focus on hiring new drivers to man Celebration’s routes since much of his staff has remained intact over the course of his 17 years at the helm of the company. Nalley, on the other hand, said it isn’t uncommon for between 1,000 and 5,000 people to apply for a job posting within a 24-hour period. He pointed to two factors that drove interest.

“We’ll talk to them about what attracted them to our organization,” Nalley said. “I would say the common themes I always hear are, one, our culture. …The other thing, we just really are intentional about maintaining our fleet. If there are any [issues with our fleet], such as a creased bumper or something of that nature, we’re intentional about changing it so that way we protect our brand, protect our image. A lot of people at Coastal are just aligned with our culture and how we maintain our fleet.”

As for TJ Troiano, whose family business has served commercial customers in the South Portland and northern New England areas since 1976, hiring needs have arisen as his current drivers have begun to near retirement age. “That’s why people leave our company,” he says. “So, we’re trying to replace them, and it’s harder to find younger people to stay living in Maine to start with.”

Troiano added that word of mouth and a strong reputation in the industry have aided in attracting prospective employees as the company continues to use traditional avenues, such as newspaper and internet ads, to post job openings. “We keep our trucks clean; we keep newer trucks,” he said. “The maintenance, the culture, we’re very flexible with work schedules.”

Most of Troiano’s front-load routes have moved to a four-day work week, which TJ Troiano said has helped entice some new employees. Another practice the company uses is a rapid response to applicants.

“The biggest thing we’ve changed in the last year is that when someone applies, we get back to them within 15 minutes of receiving that application,” he said. “If an application comes through on the internet or a phone call, we respond within minutes because, if we don’t, then someone else is going to hire them.”

In addition to hiring new employees, promoting them to managerial positions poses challenges. O’Connor noted that while the common practice has been to look within the operation for prospective managers, a company could be pulling its best driver off a truck and possibly compromising the quality of service on a particular route by doing so.

“We all kind of do the same thing; we look at the best driver and say, ‘Should we go down this path,’” O’Connor said. “Some of the stories end well, and some others don’t. It’s definitely something that’s got to get looked at.”

Though he hasn’t had to replace any of his managers recently, Troiano said his company’s tactic is to bring candidates into the office during slower times of the year to see how they react and to evaluate who has the sought-after skills for the role.

“One of the hardest things is you might have the best driver out there, but he may not want to be a manager,” Troiano said. “And if you push him into management, you find that you’re maybe losing the best driver and a manager. So, it has to be a pathway of, let’s show you the job, take an evaluation on their part, as well as your part, to make sure that it’s a good fit all the way around. We find that if you give someone a little bit of rope, sometimes they grab it, and you see the ambition and you slowly transition them into management. Maybe they start as a supervisor, then you move them up.”

At Coastal, Nalley said manager-in-training and mentor programs are in place to develop talent.

“We understand that talent is hard to find,” he said. “I routinely use the term that we’re not necessarily looking for unicorns. Quite frankly, we want thoroughbreds that we can paint pink and slap a horn on and they become a unicorn. And then they’ll run through walls for you. We have that philosophy where we’re going to take people and we’re going to develop them, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

Within the mentor program, Nalley said Coastal executive staff meets with both mentors and mentees weekly to discuss challenges they’re facing while finding ways for them to cross-train and walk through a detailed curriculum, which doesn’t have a set time frame for completion. “We don’t necessarily hang on a timeframe,” Nalley adds. “Because, let’s face it, they’re not printing garbagemen anymore, and, quite frankly, we have to create our own.”

Caring for the fleet

The panel agreed that a well-maintained fleet of vehicles is a means to attract and retain workers.

O’Connor, who previously owned Premier Waste Services in Phoenix before it was acquired by Waste Connections in 2021, said his trucks were a point of pride.

“I had trucks that were 15 years old that we sold to Waste Connections that I could’ve put in WasteExpo [for sale],” he said. “We took care of everything immaculately. You have to look at everything from a reflection of the service.

“If your truck pulls in and you’ve got a creased bumper, it creates multiple problems,” he added. “One, if the driver’s the guy who creased it, he’s looking at that every day and it’s a sore subject. Some of the other guys might even be breaking his back a little bit over it. You’ve got to replace stuff like that and make the truck a point of pride, because you want his service to be that same sense of pride and to take care of that truck the same way he takes care of his car at home. You want him to take care of it because it’s a quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment. Your equipment’s got to be premier, it’s got to be perfect.”

Lee said Celebration Sanitation turns its equipment over every five to eight years. “We don’t want something broken down,” he said.

O’Connor added that a happy driver is a productive driver. He recently purchased three new front-load trucks for Rio Grande, and made a point to have air conditioning systems installed by Red Dot Corp.

“I want you to be able to hang meat in that cab,” O’Connor said. “If it’s the dead of the summer season and that AC’s not blowing cold on him, and I say, ‘hey, can you go out and hit this one stop really quick,’ he’s trying to figure out how to get out of that truck. But if it’s cold and he’s comfortable, he’s saying, ‘Hey, brother, send me on another one.’”

When truck repairs become necessary, the panelists said they have been steadily increasing their parts inventories to stay prepared and to cut down on long lead times. Troiano noted that his company has waited as long as six months for parts in the past. The company has even hired a parts manager, who spends each day sourcing and ordering parts.

“We’ve had to acquire more trucks,” he said. “We’ve also probably doubled our parts inventory in-house. … We’ve learned that eBay can find parts that you can’t find elsewhere. Sometimes we have to find the part for the dealer and bring it to the dealer [for outsourced repairs]. That part’s shipped in from Montana or Wyoming, and that guy had the part somehow and shipped it to us.”

Nalley described the search for parts—and the avoidance of those long lead times—as a nightmare. “We’ve been able to increase our inventory significantly,” he said. “Getting parts or keeping uptime is tough to measure at this point. We have a system where we can look at our most frequent repair categories, and we’ve been diligent about what those categories are, and we target those items and increase our inventory as a result.”

Lee said his company has started stocking more parts within the last several years, with a focus on the items that commonly break down, such as control boxes, valve bodies, hydraulic pumps and air fittings. Celebration performs 10 percent of repairs in-house while outsourcing 90 percent of bigger jobs. “We know sooner or later that something’s going to go, so if we have the part in stock we can go ahead and fix it,” he said. “Most of the time, I’ll come out and our guys will fix something right there on the route.”

Each company represented on the panel differed on how many repair jobs stay in-house, noting the difficulty of finding quality mechanics. Troiano said his operation started outsourcing major repairs about a year ago, which necessitated the purchase of additional trucks. Troiano Waste Services currently is short two mechanics and has tried to keep the ones on hand focused on maintaining the drivers’ “creature comforts” in the truck and preventive maintenance, such as oil changes.

“We haven’t lost mechanics, but with our additional growth, it’s been harder to find mechanics,” Troiano said.

With hundreds of vehicles in its fleet, Coastal currently outsources 10 percent of its repairs and internalizes 90 percent. Nalley admitted the struggle to find qualified technicians is real, but the company has begun working with a maintenance recruiting company to address the issue.

“The other component is understanding why technicians are leaving us and being really active in exit interviews and being willing to take that feedback,” Nalley said. “It may be painful, but it also can be meaningful and help us make changes so that way we can retain that talent.”

Embracing tech

As more software solutions become available to track routes in real-time, waste and recycling haulers increasingly have turned to the cloud. But making sure a company has the right software to fit its operation, as well as the proper amount of employee training, can be a challenge.

Coastal’s drivers use tablets on their routes, and Nalley said it’s important for companies to pick programs that align with their goals.

“One of the things we’re diligent about is you can buy something off the shelf or find an alternative solution, but you have to understand how that layers into your road map,” he said. “You really need to understand what problem you’re trying to solve instead of just picking a piece of software off the shelf that you think may, at a macro level, solve your problem. You should really look across all competencies of the organization and really engage your leaders to understand what they would expect out of a software transition.

“With this cloud-based [technology], what is [a software company’s] capacity to make changes if you have a request,” he added. “We’re looking to vendors who want to play ball with us, so to speak, and can adapt a little bit instead of be rigid off the shelf.”

To simplify software use, Coastal has built a solution allowing drivers to manage multiple functions on their tablets without having to switch applications. Once new software is introduced, the company engages in extensive training with employees.

“I won’t deploy anything that they have to, say, run the route on a certain app, then clock in on another and have to bounce back and forth,” Nalley said. “It’s too much bouncing around, in my opinion, for our drivers. … At the core, this is a really simple business that we need to keep simple and not overcomplicate it. The minute we do, and we get too far ahead of our skis, that’s when you start to lose the engagement of the drivers or lose our focus on what we really want to measure and be good at.”

Troiano, whose company also has transitioned to onboard tablets in recent years, said it was important to identify the goals before purchasing new software to avoid overcomplicating work for the drivers in the field. His company runs an older program but has managed to aid the drivers in focusing more on their routes than plugging in information on every stop.

“As far as our drivers, we want to get them to the point where they’re not secretaries in the trucks anymore,” he said. “They drive the truck, that’s what they need to do, and they don’t need to fill out a bunch of paperwork. … We’ve gotten to the point where our front-load cans have ID tags on them, and our driver gets into the truck, hits ‘start route,’ and he never really interacts with the onboard computer. It’s taking care of everything—the tags, the stops, transmitting the weights of the containers back to us.

“These roads are way busier than they were years ago, and the last thing we need is a driver rushing down the road, trying to write down stuff on his clipboard,” he added.

If a hauler is choosing a new cloud-based software platform, Troiano recommended using a vendor that is nimble and can adapt a program for the hauler’s needs. Also, if tablets are being used, make sure they are easy to operate.

When transitioning to tablets, Troiano brought the vendor to Maine to sit with his drivers and work with them. He also had several members of his crew he dubbed “super users,” who had prior experience using route software on tablets, teach their fellow drivers.

“We had our route supervisor involved,” Troiano said. “We want to make sure it’s simple for them. Back at the office, we can unravel whatever they’re doing and figure out how to develop reports. It’s all about their user interaction.”

Recycling routes

Haulers that also collect loads of customers’ recyclables have run into issues of contamination and increased costs.

A hauler in a small community, Celebration Sanitation has emphasized communication with its customers to keep its contamination rate low. Lee said between 48 percent and 50 percent of the Celebration community—some 4,500 residents—participate in the city’s recycling program, with a contamination rate of 5 percent or less.

“It’s communication, communication and communication,” Lee said. “Whether it’s the driver, whether it’s the helpers on the back of the truck who are watching what’s going in. And then I’m very stringent with contamination in our stream, especially after 2018 when the recycling world got tipped upside down with what happened with our overseas partners not buying any more recycling. We had to decide if we were going to recycle properly or not recycle at all, because our costs kept going through the roof every time we turned around. The cost of tipping increased by 25 percent or 50 percent sometimes.”

Celebration went through a series of programs where it phased out open-top bins, then worked out a deal with its recycler in which its tipping and recycling costs would not increase as long as the contamination rate was 5 percent or lower. After a three-month audit of loads, the company reached 5 percent contamination and even dropped as low as 2 percent at times.

“When our customers found out that their recycling was actually being recycled properly and was clean, more came on board,” Lee said. “We never lost customers, but we cleaned the stream, and it’s been working ever since.”

Lee added that his company addresses communication and education by engaging residents of all ages, including children at schools and daycare facilities, and runs a recycling program called Clean Stream Initiative.

Communication remains important for large haulers such as Coastal, which operates five material recovery facilities. Nalley said he likes to gauge the strength of the relationship between his teams and the solid waste management department, the code enforcement department or the solid waste director in a particular location. “I’ll typically go out, ask for a meeting at the outset of a contract, or after the first 90 days or even six months, just because I want to understand the strength of that relationship,” he said.

Troiano’s company, which offers recycling to its commercial customers, has found success mitigating contamination by keeping a considerable distance between waste and recycling containers at the locations it services.

“Some people are going to dump their trash at whichever container they come to first, and that causes contamination,” Troiano said. “We struggle with cleaning it up, and we don’t have a lot of answers currently. Every single-sort load comes back to our facility, gets picked through, and sometimes you can find where the contamination came from, and we can go back and work with that customer. A lot of times you can’t. You just try to educate.”