New service rises from high trash fee
They drive through Oakland at 3 a.m. every weekday — six burly men in reflective suits — tracing the route of city garbage trucks, but hitting each stop just a few hours earlier.
Their job: to lug massive trash bins from apartment complexes, restaurants and other businesses to Oakland’s curbsides where garbage trucks operated by Waste Management empty them later.
Two years ago, there was no market for a business that specialized in “a la carte” bin-moving
services. Now, there’s demand.
The men are employed by Bay Area Bin Support, which opened shop a year ago with the sales pitch that it can save Oakland property owners and businesses hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month. Instead of paying the Waste Management fees — up to $931 to push or pull a Dumpster or other large bin to the curbside — property and business owners can hire Bay Area Bin Support to move the containers for less.
Waste Management rolled out the controversial fee last summer, prompting protests on the steps of City Hall and a lawsuit from property owners who said it amounted to an unconstitutional tax.
“We have some customers whose (Waste Management) bills were in the thousands of dollars and that’s a significant difference from what we charge,” said Nancy Fiame, who founded Bay Area Bin Support with her husband, Junior, a former Waste Management employee. Fiame said her company charges about $100 a month to push small bins, and upward of $200 a month for large ones.
Within weeks of its inception, Bay Area Bin Support had a competitor, Bay Area Waste Services, which also moves trash bins to curbs. Both companies claim to undercut Waste Management by hundreds of dollars a month, and say they are thriving. Bay Area Bin Support has about 90 clients and Bay Area Waste Services serves several large apartment buildings and a few restaurants.
“I think it’s fabulous,” said lawyer Andrew Zacks, who represents the three property owners suing the city. “If they’re able to break into that monopoly — hey, it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, it’s great to be in America.”
Even so, Zacks said, he hopes to ultimately put these new companies out of business: His lawsuit claims that push fees are illegal.
“They’re part of a scheme to generate revenue for the city,” Zacks said. His lawsuit, which was filed in June and is pending in Alameda County Superior Court, notes that Waste Management pays Oakland $25 million annually for the privilege of keeping the contract. The company has passed that burden onto customers by charging for services that used to be free — such as pushing trash bins.
City leaders, meanwhile, have strongly denounced Waste Management’s push fees, despite approving them unanimously in 2014.
“They’re way too high,” said City Councilman Dan Kalb, adding that he is familiar with the new push service businesses, and has encouraged Oakland residents to use them.
The head of Waste Management’s Alameda County division says push fees are justifiable, considering how much it strains workers to haul heavy bins each day, and given how much time they lose retrieving bins that are stowed deep inside parking garages, or below steep driveways.
“Our franchised push-pull rates reflect the cost of labor, (the) high workers’ comp premium, and lost productivity,” said Barry Skolnick, president of Waste Management of Alameda County Inc. He said he welcomes upstart companies like Bay Area Bin Support and Bay Area Waste Services, because they take over work that Waste Management would rather do without.
“People who don’t understand the industry just think a truck does all the work,” said Felix Martinez of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 70, the union that represents Waste Management employees. “There are guys with knee injuries and back injuries from the repetitive physical nature of the job.”
Martinez said that while he commends Bay Area Bin Support and Bay Area Waste Services for seizing an opportunity, he also predicts they won’t be able to grow — as their workforces increase, so will the cost of workers’ compensation for injuries, he said.
Fiame and Bay Area Waste Services chief Brandon Serrano both acknowledged the high cost of workers’ compensation. For now, Fiame has four fulltime employees and two workers from a temporary agency.
Serrano’s company consists solely of the two men who founded it.