Supply chain problems continue to dog Golden Triangle Waste Services’ garbage pickup, but potential short-term agreements with Starkville and Columbus may ease the burden long enough for the service to catch up.
GTWS has been struggling with an aging fleet and long wait times for parts for months, and at least for that piece of the pickup puzzle, nothing much has changed, said General Manager Mary Ann Gilliland. New trucks the service ordered a year ago still haven’t made it to the production line.
“Currently we have six of our 15 trucks down,” she told The Dispatch Tuesday afternoon. “We’re in the same situation we were in a month ago. It’s been a struggle to keep up and getting everybody picked up.”
Getting the parts to fix disabled trucks hasn’t gotten easier, Gilliland said.
“We just got a truck up today that had been down for three days waiting on brakes,” she said.
GTWS contracts with Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Webster counties and most of their municipalities, serving about 50,000 residential and commercial customers. The largest of the municipalities, Columbus and Eupora, are contracted for twice weekly pickup while residents elsewhere in the service area get once weekly garbage pickup.
To ease the pickup burden, GTWS has asked Columbus and Eupora to drop to once weekly pickup temporarily. Leaders from both entities are considering the request but have not agreed.
Starkville, which operates its own garbage service and does not use GTWS, has offered Oktibbeha County trucks and drivers on Wednesdays to help pick up rural routes.
Supply chain, new trucks
Waters Truck and Tractor services the International trucks GTWS uses. President and co-owner Mike Waters said the supply chain issues are the worst he’s seen in his career.
“Parts depots may order 100 parts and get 50, which means 50 people aren’t getting the part they ordered,” he said.
Wait times to get parts are very long, he said.
“If you back up before all this stuff, for International we typically got parts next day, or in two days,” he said. “A long time would be five or six days to get a part.”
Nowadays it can take two or three weeks, he said.
“It’s an industry-wide mess,” Waters said. “A lot of parts come from India or China, and if they have one (COVID-19) case, they shut down the whole plant for up to a month.”
It’s not all bad news, though. Gilliland said she just found out that 10 trucks GTWS ordered in October 2021 will begin going into production shortly.
“Three are supposed to go into production in November, and three more in December,” she said. “The next four will be going into production in the first quarter of 2023.”
The trucks take 90 to 120 days to produce, she said. The GTWS board — which is composed of supervisors from the counties GTWS serves — also approved the emergency purchase of another truck, a new chassis with a used body, that should be delivered in about three weeks.
GTWS is also on the waiting list for rental trucks with two different agencies.
The Golden Triangle Regional Solid Waste landfill is also staying open on Saturdays, she said.
“They were previously only open five days,” she said. “Being open that sixth day will help us tremendously.”
Cutback for Columbus?
Another possible short-term solution would be cutting pickups in Columbus back to once per week to allow the limited number of trucks to be used elsewhere, said Lowndes County District 1 Supervisor Harry Sanders, who sits on the GTWS board.
“We’ve got five trucks dedicated to the two municipalities we serve, Columbus and Eupora, which get picked up twice per week,” he said. “If we could go to one day a week, that would help us out tremendously. … I don’t see why they would oppose it. (Columbus) doesn’t generate enough garbage to be picked up twice a week, anyway.”
Sanders said that there was a cost incentive, too.
“It’ll be cheaper for them,” he said. “It would save them about $140,000 a year. I don’t see why the city would stick its nose up at that. It would certainly help them.”
The decision whether to reduce bills to customers due to reduced pickup lies with the cities, Gilliland said.
“We don’t bill individuals directly. We bill the cities,” she said. “So that would be up to (the council) if they make an adjustment.”
Columbus Mayor Keith Gaskin said the city is considering the request but is also looking at other options.
“They’re down to so few trucks that once a week would be more efficient and effective, and there would be less confusion about when to put trash out,” Gaskin said. “I think there is some support for that on the council, but I’m not sure how much.”
Gaskin said he is working with Chief Financial Officer James Brigham to look at the costs associated with doing business with GTWS and exploring whether there were better alternatives.
“That’s just a reflection of doing good business for the city, being the best stewards we can of our resources,” Gaskin said. “… There are other waste management groups we could go with, ones that are private, that do this. We’re also looking at what it would look like to take it back in again as a city.”
Gaskin said the city’s six-year contract with GTWS expires Aug. 31, 2023, but he said he isn’t sure the council would have to wait that long to cut bait.
“(City Attorney Jeff Turnage) said we can step out of it at any time,” Gaskin said. “One administration’s contract does not necessarily hold over into a new one. It would take a vote of the council.
“I think there are probably some who would like to do something right away,” he added.
Gaskin said the council would likely discuss the issue further at Thursday morning’s work session.
Starkville offers help to Oktibbeha County
The city of Starkville has offered to rent its trucks for use one day a week, according to Oktibbeha County District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, who is also a GTWS board member.
“The city of Starkville does not run garbage routes on Wednesdays,” Howard said. “(Mayor Lynn Spruill) offered the possibility of (GTWS) having the option of renting a couple of trucks and a couple of drivers.”
Spruill told The Dispatch the offer had been made to Oktibbeha County, not to GTWS.
“We’re working with the county, not with (GTWS),” she said. “We haven’t gotten an agreement yet, or adequate details on what they want.”
Spruill said the city needs to know how many trucks were needed and what routes specifically would be run.
“It depends on what they want,” she said. “We can do two trucks, we might be able to do three. If they want one, we can do that, but there are costs associated with that.”
Spruill said the cost per truck per day would be $1,326, which includes employee costs and landfill fees. By law the city can’t donate to the county and must get something back for the service, she said.
“Those are taxpayer dollars and we have to have some kind of arrangement,” she said.
Any agreement would be for Wednesdays only, she said.
“The rest of the time we pick up the city, and our first obligation is to the city,” she said.
Any arrangement also would have to be approved by the board of aldermen.
Howard said Gilliland is looking over Starkville’s offer, despite Spruill’s insistence that any arrangement would be between the city and county. Gilliland said she intends to contact Spruill later this week to talk about a potential agreement.
“If we can get that done, we would pull the truck in Oktibbeha County and move it to another city or county to get caught up there,” she said. “It would be a tremendous help.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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