Meridian Waste expands its service in Florida

The Meridian Waste Florida LLC business unit of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Meridian Waste has started fulfilling its second residential collection for the city of Jacksonville, Florida.

According to Meridian, the contract represents the first time the city has granted two residential contracts to a single hauler since it undertook a consolidation process.

The first contract serving the north side, which began two years ago, with a new west side service grants Meridian the exclusive right to collect for more than 158,000 city of Jacksonville residents for five services including garbage, recycling, yard waste, bulk waste appliances and white goods.

Meridian, an integrated, nonhazardous solid waste services company, will fulfill the contracts with a fleet of 72 rear-load trucks used for both garbage collection and yard waste collections, plus automated side loaders for recycling collection and two appliance collection lift-back tailgate trucks.

The company credits its local general and operations managers residential solid waste collection operations, field supervisory staff, CDL-certified drivers, helpers, mechanics and dispatchers as “the underlying key” to successful operations in Jacksonville.

The firm says 116 new employees were hired to service the city’s west side, with new employees receiving a combined 872 hours of orientation, safety and driver training. This also included auditing routes in which driver and helper teams predrive their collections routes to better understand the nuances of their individual routes for a higher level of customer care.

Meridian says five of the six of the new west side field supervisors were promoted from within the ranks of existing Meridian Waste staff.

“Customer service excellence is what sets Meridian Waste apart from the competition,” says Dave Shepler, an area president with Meridian.

Meridian describes its core waste business as centered on residential, commercial and industrial nonhazardous waste collection and disposal. Currently, the company operates in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The firm serves nearly 220,000 residential, commercial, industrial and governmental customers, deploying a fleet of commercial, residential and roll-off trucks. Meridian operates 14 hauling subsidiary companies, five transfer stations and materials recycling facilities, two municipal solid waste landfills and four construction and demolition landfills, handling more than 880,000 tons of material annually.