Waste Management crews keeping Lynn clean

LYNN – Julio Saldana eats oatmeal for breakfast, tugs on heavy gloves and a bright yellow sweatshirt and spends the next four hours helping co-worker Leroy Heard load 12 tons of trash into a truck.”Then we go to the dump and get lunch,” Heard said.Saldana and Heard have worked a combined 13 years for Waste Management, the trash hauler that picks up Lynn’s garbage. Along with Waste Management crews assigned to four other Lynn routes, Saldana and Heard work 10 hours a day picking up and emptying trash barrels placed at curbs in front of 1,000 local homes.”They do a lot of work,” said Waste Management route manager Bill Thistlewood.On a typical workday morning in West Lynn, Saldana steers a 20-ton Mack truck known as a “rear-load packer” along Summer Street while Heard hangs off the right-rear corner of the truck, poised to leap down and grab hold of a barrel packed with trash bags.The Mack is equipped with right-hand drive so that Saldana can stop the truck and jump out to assist Heard. The men work at a fast pace that sends them around the corner onto Avon Street within minutes. A beer bottle falls out of a bag and shatters at Heard’s feet but he does not miss a beat grabbing another barrel and tipping its contents into the Mack’s loading bay.Saldana started working for Waste Management after a friend urged him to fill out a company application. Heard quit a real estate job to hang off a trash truck.”It was a new opportunity and the money’s great,” he said.Waste Management public sector services manager Jim Nocella said company workers earn “in the $60,000 range with overtime.” Applicants must pass a lifting and range of motion test before they are hired. Passing the test does not mean the first few weeks on the job won’t slam a rookie laborer or helper with a tough physical challenge.Heard said it took him “a solid month” to adapt to the job’s pace.”I just focused on hoping the end of the day was in sight,” he said.Thistlewood said the summer months are some of the toughest in the trash collecting business. The heat makes the fast collection pace even more punishing and trash volume dramatically increases in the summer with people hosting cookouts and kids home from school.Heard wears three pairs of gloves on the job to guard against hypodermic needles lurking in trash. The technique for safely transferring tons of garbage from the sidewalk to the Mack involves bent knees and a straight back.”You’ve got to get low with the barrel,” he said.Thistlewood has worked for Waste Management for more than 20 years along with fellow long-time employee George Carrion. The pair recalled the day they picked up four full loads of trash – 60 tons – and hauled it off for disposal.”There’s a camaraderie working as a team, knowing you’re done and you’ve completed the job,” he said.Saldana said he replies with pride when people ask him what he does for a living, in part because a day spent driving the Mack gives him an insight into how one person’s trash is truly another’s junk.Heard agreed and recalled the rare metal bar he found in a trash barrel and turned in to company managers.”You wonder how something like that gets thrown out,” he said.