Before there was Republic Services there was BFI

A tribute to BFI


Typical BFI truck.

So Republic Services is a pretty big name and everyone knows them. But the Republic that exists today wasn't created until a merger in the middle part of last decade between Republic Services and Allied Waste.

BFI
Allied Waste
Waste Management
Republic Services

Those were the big haulers of yesterday.

In the 1990s Waste Management and BFI were the top dogs.

1990s Waste Management


1990s BFI

Yeah in the 1990s BFI was the waste and garbage hauling company and now they are pretty much relegated to the trash bin of history pun intended.

 

Every now and then I still see an old brown Waste Management garbage can. The green waste management trucks have been around for a good minute now, about 20 years or so I think 1998ish was when Waste Management changed logos and stuff. From what I've read and hear the brown Waste Management was the better Waste Management to work for.

 

I guess it doesn't matter, much but the Republic Services that exists today is really just BFI of yesterday with Republic Services added in. BFI was bigger then Republic. BFI in the 1990s had their hands in everything more then I think Republic did back in those days. They certainly were better known.

BFI was into doing city work, landfills, medical waste, transfer stations the whole 9 yards, automated waste collection in the 1990s which was around, but wasn't nearly as popular as it is today.

 

From what I remember from an old interview Tom Fatjoe was a 28 year old accountant in Texas who founded BFI. What happened was I think he was on the board of the home owners association he lived in and they didn't have a city waste department in 1968 where he lived. So it was on Fatjoe to figure out garabge removal for his home owners association. I think he bought an old garbage truck and for a while he was riding off the back of a garbage truck. In 1968 I don't know all the particulars off the top of my head, but somehow he got together with a group and they opened a landfil. From there they bought out the Browning-Ferris Machine Company and changed the name into BFI and then went on to build one of the largest national garbage hauling companies in the United States which reached it's peak in the 1990s.

 

Do you remember the BFI dumpsters and trucks from the 1990s or earlier?

 

Carnival life?