Aleksej | stock.adobe.com
Automating waste and recycling collection can reduce worker’s compensation claims and insurance premiums while improving route efficiencies. However, waste and recycling carts can represent considerable expense for the municipalities or haulers that purchase them. In addition to their upfront procurement costs, their assembly and distribution and management and maintenance have associated costs.
Many container providers offer services to assist haulers or municipalities with container assembly and distribution and with software that enables the tracking of container inventory and service requests.
Dan Lynch, the Atlanta-based director of national accounts at Los Angeles-based Rehrig Pacific, a container supplier that also offers container management services, provides some best practices for container management that the company has learned from providing this service.
Delivery & inventory management
“When delivering carts, it is critical the address is associated with the cart’s serial number and barcode at the time of delivery,” he advises.
Lynch also recommends taking a date- and time-stamped photo of the cart at the curb to establish a visual record of the delivery of the cart. “This ensures the asset is matched up with the service address, and proper billing can be developed from this delivery.
He says using software that offers a work order, asset and inventory management system can facilitate cart distribution and management. “It’s critical to utilize technology to manage inventory and the associated work orders that impact those inventory levels,” Lynch says. “The old days of using manual spreadsheets are wrought with human error and simply not efficient.”
By automating this process with the help of software, he says, municipalities and haulers easily can track the cart sizes in their inventories, so they know when it's time to reorder carts of certain sizes. Software also allows a container to be assigned to a specific address as Lynch recommends.
He adds that municipalities or haulers should integrate the software they use to manage their carts with their back-office software and track all the actions associated with a cart, from delivery to wheel replacement. Lynch says this back-office integration often is overlooked.
Maintaining & replacing carts
Purchasing a high-quality cart can help to reduce work orders in the field during the lifetime of the cart, Lynch says.
Additionally, he recommends a preventive maintenance program for the truck’s gripper, in the case of residential waste and recycling carts. This will help to reduce damage to the carts from handling during servicing.
“Beyond that, it’s important to have ample inventory of wheels, axles, lids and other components on your truck so you don’t have to bring a cart in for a simple repair that otherwise could have been performed in the field,” he suggests. Doing so saves money and time.
Not all carts can be repaired, however. That is generally the case when the body of that cart has sustained structural damage, Lynch says. “But what is often forgotten at this moment is that cart might still be under warranty and should be submitted for warranty electronically.” He says this often is true for carts that are less than 10 years old.
Of course, companies will need to track the age of their carts to be able to take advantage of manufacturer warranties. Lynch suggests recording the serial number of each warrantied cart as it’s brought back to the yard. This number can then be cross-referenced using the software to determine when it entered the inventory. “If that’s not done, broken carts will either be landfilled or sent to a scrap recycler for material credit,” he adds. “As part of our cart maintenance program, we electronically record all serial numbers (regardless of cart manufacturer) and provide that to our customer to submit to appropriate cart company(ies) for warranty.”
Regardless of whether a hauler decides to handle cart maintenance and management internally or to outsource it to a service provider, Lynch says it’s important to understand the associated costs. “This allows for an objective comparison and for the right decision to be made for both parties,” he says. “Maintaining the appropriate number of spare parts is critical to keeping your cost of repair to be limited to on the street repairs versus bringing them back to the yard as discussed earlier.”
When it comes to deciding whether to outsource cart management, Lynch says, “Having well-vetted employees in this customer-facing role is critical. A hauling operation’s primary focus is getting the trash and recycling picked up at the curb every day. Container maintenance is often overlooked, which can lead to revenue leakage and poor customer service.”
Lynch adds that outsourcing this service often means that technology can be introduced to lessen the time and money that haulers or municipalities spend managing work order volumes and inventories.