“Garbage trucks are the most abused trucks on the road,” declared Golden Triangle Waste Services General Manager Mary Anne Gilliland.
“There are a lot of moving parts. They’re heavily used. It’s hard on a truck.”
That wear and tear — coupled with perpetually snarled supply chains — is the gremlin currently bedeviling garbage pickup across Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Webster counties, according to both Gilliland and other local officials.
GTWS serves the rural portions of all three counties, all of which have representatives on its board. It also serves the municipalities in those three counties, excluding Starkville. It provides twice weekly garbage pickup in Columbus and once weekly elsewhere.
For the last six months or so, the service has been struggling to keep its aging fleet on the road, leading to delays picking up trash. Gilliland estimated that around half the 15-truck fleet is down right now, and there’s no end in sight.
“Right now we have five trucks at Waters Truck and Tractor,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve got one in Tupelo, and we’ve got one that we just finished putting a new blade in. It’ll be back up today, so technically we’re only six trucks down.”
Normally the company rotates its fleet every five years, but new trucks are not being made right now, she said.
“We ordered 10 new trucks back in October,” she said. “As of today they are still not in production. That’s really hurting us.”
The youngest trucks in the fleet were purchased back in November 2020, she said. That means the increasingly fusty fleet is carrying the whole load, in spite of the fact that those trucks have racked up plenty of miles.
“Some of the trucks we’re running right now have between 150,000 and 200,000 miles on them,” she said.
It’s not just numbers that wear out the vehicles, though.
“It’s not really how many miles they have,” said Lowndes County District 1 Supervisor Harry Sanders, who is one of two county representatives who sits on the GTWS board. “It’s the stopping and starting. There’s no telling how many times those trucks stop and start (on a daily basis).”
And there are many starts and stops, Gilliland said. She estimated that her trucks stop at 50,000 households a week across all three counties.
Old trucks are being run until they just about fall apart, which is when the other problem cuts in: the wait time to get replacement parts.
Gilliland said she’s waited as long as three months for repairs.
“Waters Trucks and Tractor handles our warranty maintenance,” she said. “We had a truck that sat there for three months waiting on a new motor. … I’ve got one now in Tupelo waiting on a transmission, and it’s been there for a month.”
Those missing trucks mean routes are being underserved, she said.
“On a normal day, I’ve got eight trucks running in Lowndes County, two in Oktibbeha County and two in Webster,” she said. “If you look at it like that, right now I’ve got about eight trucks to cover all three counties.”
To cover the holes, trucks are being sent back out once they finish their normal routes, she said.
“We try not to get more than one day behind,” she said. “It may not get picked up on the normal day, it may be the next day, but they have to get that pickup.”
This isn’t a local problem, she said. The competition for garbage trucks is fierce.
“I’ve contacted other cities to try to rent trucks,” she said. “They don’t want to turn their trucks loose because they’re in the same boat we’re in.”
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston, who does not serve on the waste services board, said the rate at which used trucks moved was like nothing he had ever seen.
“If you put a used garbage truck up for sale today, you would sell it that same day for more than what you bought it for,” he said. “They’re just in that short supply. You’d get top dollar because everybody has them and nobody wants them.”
The search for available rental trucks has caused some strange twists, Gilliland said.
“I managed to find one rental truck in a shop in Birmingham,” she said. “As soon as it gets out of the shop, it’s coming here. It’s actually one of our old trucks that we sold.”
Gilliland said she appreciated her customers’ patience.
“The majority of the public has been very understanding and we do appreciate that,” she said. “Our phone rings nonstop. Most are very patient, but some…aren’t.”
Webster County District 4 Supervisor Paul Crowell, who is president of the GTWS board, did not respond to a Dispatch request for comment by press time.
Dispatch Managing Editor Zack Plair contributed to this report.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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