Profileof a Collector

The Roads Are Not Easy For Stanley and Friend

by. Terry Xughes AVALON - The silence of the streets dotted with early morning joggers and bicyclers is broken by the rumble of the trash truck It is 8:30 A M. at the Concord Motor Inn in Avalon, the truck's first stop. The temperature is already a baking 80 degrees. There is no wind and the trash dumpsters are bulging open, waiting to be emptied • Mow are you doing Stanley?" the reporter greets the driver. "Not good," is the reply. "It's,gonna be hot. I’ll be in and out of the cab all day " The truck shudders and shakes with its first swallow of garbage and heads for the next hotel. When it reaches the dumpster the crew jumps off the back and clips on the heavy metal hooks that lift the 600 pound bin into the truck’s hopper. Stanley is out of the cab and pulls the leVer down which elevates and tilts the dumpster Glass from bottles sprays out. narrowly missing him. He already has a light bead of sweat on his arms and forehead. Slapping his back with a per-

functory swipe he shakes his head, "Greenheads will eat you up.'.' SO BEGINS ANOTHER day for Stanley Jones, the 29-year-old son in the family's garbage removal service. His lean muscled upper torso with veins popping from his biceps and well deTined triceps attest to his 13 years working on the trash truck. "My dad always had trucks and I’ve always worked around them. I can take ✓ apart the motor, the rear, do whatever work needs to be done. There isn’t much on this truck that I haven’t gotten into." He must like trucks. After nine hours of collecting garbage, Stanley drives a tractor-trailer between Salem and Linden to make extra money. “It's hard to keep help these days. Everybody wants a sit down job and there aren’t any of them so they’d rather not work. We’re short one truck today because a crew didn’t come in. They didn’t want to work so the truck couldn’t go out. It messed up the whole day.” IT WASN’T JUST that Stanley would have to work harder today. He also didn't

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tike the fact that they would have to leave trash cans on the sides of houses rather than be able to walk them out of sight around back. It is a little bit of pride that you wouldn't expect to find in a business where the work is seven days a week and $10,000 a year. i Because the crew was short, Stanley had to shift men around, putting his regular man Randolph on another truck and picking up a someone else. A tried and true crew is important, not so much for experience, but to make sure that people are compatible. The conditions can get harsh and you need people who can work well

together.

His two partners today are hard workers though. The taller, older fellow is working part time. His salt and pepper beard looks a little like Red Fox’s. The young collector, William, is short with close cropped hair and a pirate's scar under his right eye. Wearing a navy blue tank top he looks more like a lookout on a 15th century frigate than the trash remover he is. For their work they will make "a little over minimum," tells Stanley. "Can you tell a person by their trash?" asks the reporter. "Yes, a lot of times," replies Stanley. "I carMell the rentals and group rentals. TheyVinly put trash oht maybe once eve^ two \Aecks. When they do, they pile it. We’re^here but they are either too bombed or t6o lazy to put it out regularly." (Stanley says that 90 percent of the trash he picks up is beer bottles.) "They don't realize that we can’t run our whole route when we get such a large load at one stop. It Tills the whole truck up.” DESPITE THE BLISTERING HEAT, Stanley says it’s harder to work in the cold. “You cdonever keep warm, especially when yetrUrceh the back end and hanging

onto steel.”

However, visions of cold steel ore only a distant memory at 9:18 A.M. when the temperature is 84 degrees. BY THIS TIME the collectors are starting to get into the groove, flipping the trash into the truck and throwing the cans in fireman's relay style back to the curb. “What is the worst kind of trash?" the

reporter asks.

"Fish. The smell.’ When we pick up a lot of fish you can smell the truck coming for blocks. The only way to get rid of it is to

wash the truck out."

"What is the preferred method of disposing garbage." the reporter asks. "We appreciate the plastic bags with lock tops put inside of plastic cans. Some people just throw the garbage in the can or in open bags and the seagulls get onto it. Then you have to pick.it up off the street.” (Recently, the Avalon council started a campaign to make sure all residents would

bag and lock their trash.) Bike Auction STONE HARBOR -

There will be a public auction of 19 “more or less" bicycles, 10 a.m. Aug. 28 at the water tower parking lot, between 95th and 96th

Sts.

The borough removed the bicycles from public thoroughfares, some apparently having been abandoned, and all are unclaimed. They will go to the highest bidder.

AS WE ROLLED along some homeowners wave at us and others just stand in the shade and watch as the men haul and stack the empty garbage cans back up on the la^ns. Stanley turns on the hydraulic press and jumps nimbly out of the cab to load a bulky washing machine carton. Amazingly, William begins to break into a trot on 31st. Street after 40 blocks of hot, tiring collection. “Go ahead, Go ahead,' he yells. “They’d like to get done as early as possible,” says Stanley. “But that won’t be before 5 or 5:30.” When a crew has filled a truck to capacity it heads for Woodbine to drop off a load. It then returns to continue on its route. WE PULLED into the landfill and Stanley drove the truck right up to the dump site. He got out and unhooked the latches to the tailgate. Brown juices, newspapers, beer bottles, beer cans, vodka bottles, coke bottles, lettuce, Pampers, pineapple cans, antifreeze containers, beer bottles and more beer cans dumped out. Seagulls the size of condors waited on the 40 foot sand dunes for us to move so they could go back to their feasting. He would make two more trips out here before the day was over. As we bounce back down Routed Stanley pushes in the clutch with his worn boots and shifts into third gear. As we pulled back into town, the other truck was heading out to the dump. The driver stuck his thumb out of the cabin and signaled that the collectors were waiting for us. Stanley nodded. We picked up the men and drove up 28th Street. George sighed, “One of them big, hot days.” It was. The site of the ocean proved too much for this reporter. I bailed out and headed for the sea. Stanley and the rest of the crew waved goodbye. The had 20 more blocks to finish before they could seriously think of the sea. (Terry Xughes is a freelance writer.)

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