It's a Dirty Job, But Someone's Got to Do It
By: Melissa Ostrow
For: Outlook
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Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on the university's solid waste management division. Journalism student Melissa Ostrow spent a morning with two employees as they went about their jobs. In this week's installment, she rides around in the front-end loader.
My alarm blared and I quickly got out of bed and tried to brush off the sleep. Showered and filled with hot oatmeal by 4:30 a.m., I was off. I thanked the skies that I didn't have to do this every day.
Today, I was going to be picking up garbage with the solid waste guys at the University of Maryland.
Every week people all over the country have a scheduled day where they collect the garbage around their house and put it on the curb. By the time they wake the next morning or return from work in the evening, all the garbage they had accumulated is gone.
I would be spending half the morning riding around on the front-end loader with Renay Bell, or, as the guys call him, "Rey," and the second half of the day with Mark Wilson on the rolloff trash truck.
When I got to their trailer at 4:45 a.m., Rey had already clocked in and gone to get the truck. So I sat with the other five men, while they threw on their coveralls and drank their coffee. They all seemed pretty lively for this early hour.
"It's OK, not hard work, you just have to get used to the hours. I like the hours now, no traffic coming or going from work," said Chester Tapp, who has been at the university for nine years.
Not one minute after 5 a.m. my chariot arrived, a large white and red frontend loader with a big terrapin on the side. Rey greeted me with a smile and helped me pull myself into the large truck. Inside smooth jazz played on the radio and a small television hung from the windshield. The television was to help Rey see what was going on behind him. He doesn't want to crush any students.
The smooth melody of the radio was soon interrupted by the loud engine and the beeping sound that signaled the hazards were on. I thought the beeping would torture me like water being dripped down your face, but the sound just blended into the atmosphere. Rey always keeps the hazards on in the morning to make sure people know he is there. "There are a lot of drunks out at 4 a.m.," Rey says.
Rey is a big guy, around 6'3", born and raised in the District. He attended Howard University on a football scholarship. "That is all I did," he says as he talks about his student days. Rey was in the accelerated chemistry program, because he wanted to be a dentist, but football and partying got the best of him.
"I didn't really learn. Being an athlete, you need to stick to the books, so that when sports can't carry you, you have something to fall back on."
After three years at Howard, he left school to travel around the world, following his high school sweetheart (who he eventually married) on her tour of duty in the Navy.
We pulled up to our first dumpster hidden behind one of the academic buildings. The giant claws came from under the sides of the truck and hooked into the handles on the dumpster, lifting it. It just hung there, looking weightless. Then Rey backed away from the curb and the large claws lifted the dumpster over our heads and shook the contents into the back of the truck. After the dumpster was empty, the arms came back down and placed the dumpster back in its original place. Then he pushed a big button and we heard the compressor squishing all of the garbage into the back of the truck. Rey and the other solid waste guys have to have either a class A or B classified drivers license and receive a physical every two years to drive the trucks.
Rey's family owns a solid waste trucking company. His uncle didn't want to "move on with the times," so Rey came to work for the university. He could never work for a private company, he says, because it would be an insult to his family.
The main thing Rey worries about while working on campus is the kids. They don't pay attention. Students have the privilege of a clean campus, but when they see this large truck cruising down the road, they just walk right into its path. They never seem to notice the large truck or the men that keep their school clean. The students are also the reason Rey does the administrative buildings first thing in the morning. The drivers are not allowed near dorms before 7 a.m.
One morning, Rey thought he saw a carpet lying in the middle of the road, then he realized it was moving. He pulled over and saw that it was a drunk kid lying in the middle of the road. Occasional weird occurrences aside, his days are pretty much the same.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, each U.S. citizen creates about 1,628 pounds of garbage a year, with about 34,160 students and 28,147 faculty and staff, one can only imagine the amount of garbage produced on campus. The truck's arms can pick up 10,000 pounds of garbage without any problem. Rey usually doesn't have to worry about a dumpster being too heavy unless a contractor has put dirt in it.
Most schools with smaller populations don't have their own crews and trucks. Besides being a large state school, the campus was here before College Park really became a city, so the school has always had its own solid waste department, according to Robert Stumpff, coordinator of General Services.
Several of the dumpsters overflow and Rey has to pick up what people haven't made the effort to put into the dumpster. I was annoyed that people were so inconsiderate, but Rey didn't seem to mind. It's worse for him when people don't tie things up and Styrofoam gets all over the place.
Does he like his job? "I like it. It's hassle free, because nobody else is out here, but you and the truck," he said. "It's just a job.
"[But] nobody knows what we go through, they just know that they want their dumpsters emptied. The trash has to be moved. You may be able to go a few days without an electrician or a plumber, but trash has to be moved every day, because nobody wants to be around garbage. You get rats and roaches."
The City of College Park serves a much smaller population, 25,000 people, and has a little less garbage (6,568 tons, 21.4 percent of which is recycled) but those people all live here year-round. However, instead of just six guys on staff like at the university, they have about 25 workers.
Last fiscal year, campus workers picked up 9,596.37 tons of garbage with 1,963.20 tons recycled (.7 percent higher than the required amount). That is a lot of garbage for guys whose salaries range from $22,210 to $32,210. The pay range is about the same as city workers, with the same benefits--it is a myth that garbage men get paid well. With that in mind, I had to ask why do the guys do it?
Rey does it for his kids, two teenage girls. Working for the university will allow them to go to college with reduced tuition. Each day he wakes up, leaves his house in Upper Marlboro and works from 5 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. He picks up his girls at school at 3:30, then heads to his second job, at a hospital, from 4:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
Rey regrets not finishing college. "If I could do it again, I would have left sports to high school." He tells his girls "to shoot high, the sky is the limit, that way they can't say they didn't try."
