Master of the trash truck

By Brendan Buhler

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

John Thomas is happy to tell you, again and again, that despite the award and the large banner of congratulations that hangs outside his workplace, he has an easy job.

Thomas drives a garbage truck. He is, in fact, the Environmental Industry Association’s garbage truck driver of the year — industrial class, large company division.

Meaning, Thomas doesn’t drive the kind of truck most people think of when they think of a garbage truck, the snail-backed compactor that rolls through your neighborhood. What Thomas drives is a little more like a flatbed truck, often called a roll-off truck, after the shipping-container-sized trash bins that roll on and off the bed.

Thomas drives this truck to hospitals, casinos, grocery stores and construction sites — 10 or 11 stops a day. He picks up a container, drives it to Republic Service’s Henderson Transfer station, empties it and drives it back to where he got it. He does this for 10 hours and 150 miles a day, four days a week. He drives alone.

What separates an average garbage truck driver from a garbage truck driver of the year? Safety and customer satisfaction.

Thirteen of the businesses on Thomas’ route wrote letters recommending him for the award. Thomas has never been injured on the job and, in his 22 years with Republic Services (Thomas has been driving for 32 years, all told), he’s never been in an accident. Well, there was one time, 21 years ago and half a million miles ago, when a guy ran a stop sign and hit the side of his truck. It was nothing big and not his fault, but Thomas can still describe the intersection.

This, mind you, in a lifetime of driving trucks that weigh 15 tons when empty and carry loads of up to 10 tons — a proportional weight increase that makes turning and stopping activities fraught with interest.

But there are skills besides safety and customer satisfaction, skills that don’t appear on a driver’s record and therefore are not taken into account when a driver of the year is selected.

Consider the loading of the container.

The first thing to know about a roll-off container is that its rollers are mounted in two rows with guardrails on either side of each. The truck bed has two rails on it. When the truck bed is tilted and the container is winched onto the bed, the rollers ride upon these rails. But first, the truck bed’s rails must be aligned with the rollers. To line them up, Thomas must reverse his 30-or-so-foot truck, often while turning in a small space and with nothing but his side mirror to guide him. The margin of error is about 2 inches.

Thomas lines up container and truck on the first try, every time.

And then it’s back to the transfer station, where he must unload the container, drive around it and load it up so it’s facing in the opposite direction. He drives it inside the transfer station’s concrete warehouse, opens the container’s doors, tilts the truck bed and shakes out several tons of trash.

“It’s a real easy job; that’s why I like it,” Thomas says, after shaking a load into the transfer station’s reeking maw.

“It’s nice, being outside, you know?”