Driving Garbage Trucks

I work for a private company in Portland, oregon called AGG Enterprises. Driving a Frontloader. Been there since 2004. Started out at $15.00hr and now im #### near at $20.00. Work M-F. Start time is 2am and earlier if i wish.. I find myself usually getting home around noon or before each day depending on how the other 10 drivers are doing and if they need backup to get there route done. Bennies are basic..health, dental and vision is paid for. They have a pretty cool profit sharing program, been makin some allright money on that. There equipment is getting better. we got 4 volvos, 2 are 1 year old and the other 2 are 3 years old.. the rest are Peterbuilts and they are about 7 years old... They do a pretty good job on the maintenance.. but with the turnover we have had.. the older trucks show it.. I think it depends on the company..just got to look around. Hope this helps in any way....

 

Sounds a whole lot better than these guys that are working for mileage pay. Welcome Jeepkid

 

I could tell you where EVERY alley is, where every side street is, where the good short cuts are.. pretty much anything about getting around downtown Portland. This knowledge comes in handy doing rush hour.

 

I worked for trash haulers in my younger days,rolloffs both trailer and straight,and transfer trailers. I do know that wastemanagement in the ne area pays their drivers by the hour and I believe overtime after 8 hrs not forty,that is for local rolloffs and garbage trucks. I am not sure of how trailer drivers get paid. Some of my friends retired from them and they have good benifits. good luck,hey,call them up and find out. I have set my rear down at the kitchen table and went thru the yellow pages in my area that I live in and call every company that interests me,and what I want to haul,you will be surprised what you come up with. If you know you might like working for a company take a ride and sell yourself,if you are a good driver and record tell them that,best of luck to you.

 

Well as many wrong turns that I have made, I think I have found most of them streets!

 

Got a confessional true story to tell you all. In my days of rolloffs,I did liquor stores,k marts and alot of others,at xmas time, returns were tossed into compacters, us drivers got tvs stereos,vacuum cleaners,toys,cars trucks etc,they threw perfectly good things away at times,wallets,raincoats,wood,lumber etc. The liquor warehouses were the best,some cases were broken or had a few bottles broken,other bottles were perfect,all kinds of whiskey,wine,beer at the landfill after we dumped the loads.you could not believe the things we had got,I had a 5 year supply of razor blades once,the thing that spoiled it for us is one driver got greedy and sold alot of them at a flea market,the razor co was told and then they destroyed the product before putting it in compacter. alot of brand new clothes,shoes socks shirts,etc. Just thought you all would like to know the fringe benifits of a trash guy.

 

Here's a good one. One of our biggest customers here locally is Goodwill Industries. We service all the stores in the Portland Metro area. They would throw away clothes that were dang near perfect condition. Allot of our drivers would help themselves to really nice jeans. Once GW caught on to what was going on they threatened to call the cops for stealing and then switch to a different hauler . Since we haul a roll-off compacter that is owned by GW they consider it there property until it is berried deep in the ground at the landfill. It got so ugly that my company put out a memo stating that anyone caught "stealing" out of the GW compactor would be fired on the spot. They would rather fire there drivers.. some of whom are the best and been with us for 10+ years then loose the contract over some one stealing a nice shirt or Tie....