Waste Management's residential accounts in the City of Pomona have always been one of the most interesting things to me. Since these HOAs don't fall under the city's regulations, many have had the same level of service with WM for more than 20 years. This means that some of the accounts in the city are still manually collected - something hard to find from WM in Southern California. However, with more and more recycling mandates coming from the state of California, automation has slowly made its way to Pomona. Seen here are three garbage trucks that service the city.
(0:00) - 264515: Over the summer, I found out that one of the last manual accounts in Pomona was being automated. My task at work one afternoon was to put together the automation letters for the Tradewind Condos HOA. On the Wednesday of that week, the route manager introduced me to the driver who does the route, Jose Maldonado. He told me what time he usually gets to Tradewind, and the next day, I met him out there to see the last manual collection at this HOA! Riding with Maldonado is David Castillo, who was training with him for the day. At the time, David was one of the newest additions to the team, transferring from WM's Lewisville yard, and wow was he an amazing driver. He became the fastest driver in the yard (one of my favorite stories was how he covered the RL route for a day and finished by 11 in the morning) and was going to be the new driver trainer. Unfortunately, David had to transfer back to Texas because of some medical issues in his family so this was the only time I ever got to see him in action. Anyway, it was really awesome seeing this route get collected before it was automated. As much of an automated fan as I am, I liked how this was manual because Maldonado used to take a Curotto Can out to service this and one other manual account. Huge set outs at some of the condos and somehow, people got carts from all over the County. The cart roll out came through the Saturday after this was filmed so I'm glad I got it just in time.
(11:34) - 263453: Today, I went out to La Verne in hopes of seeing Rosendo Pimienta. I thought he was covering a recycle route but it turns out that he was one of a couple guys scouring the city for Christmas trees. He ended up going out to The Oaks community to collect a few trees over there, so I was glad to be able to catch a Mack over here again.
(12:36) - 105531: About a month after I filmed Mike in this HOA last time (2 years ago now), he received a brand new "Think Green, Think Clean" Amrep since he kept breaking down. I was curious as to how he'd handle this HOA now in an ASL, so today, I stopped by after Pimienta finished. He's able to maneuver through the tight streets much better since there's no bucket in front but still has to get out quite a bit to move carts around like when he had a Curotto. Arm speed on the truck is actually pretty good - overall Mike said he likes this truck quite a bit.
Hope you all enjoy a glimpse of Waste Management's residential work in Pomona! Only one manual account remains and the days are numbered before it becomes automated.
Thanks for watching and thanks to all the WM drivers featured in the video!