Garbage Collection Truck Drivers Maintain Personal Connection with Kirkland

To the relief of two waste management truck drivers in Kirkland who have been in the business for years, the city recently chose to add more time to their contract with Waste Management.

For over twenty years, Richard Salts and Steve Wegener have worked for the waste collection company as garbage truck drivers. Having developed a strong relationship with their communities, they restlessly waited to hear whether the contract would be extended or kept the way it was. The workers admitted that if Kirkland had forgone the extension, they would have felt personally insulted due to their deep personal ties to the city.

The new expiration date for the contract between Waste Management and Kirkland is June 30th 2020, up from the same day of 2018. If necessary, the city can choose to extend the contract for another two years prior to the passing of the new expiration date. This will likely be the case if everything runs smoothly for the extra two years.

 If June 30th 2018 had remained the expiration date for the contract, it would have been opened up to a different waste management company, and both longtime truck drivers would have discontinued their work in Kirkland. Although this may not have significantly affected the city as a whole, the drivers would have been heartbroken, forced to leave work in a city they deeply care about.

Waste Management has had an office in Kirkland for three and a half decades now, and its managers were happy to hear about the contract extension. The company issued a formal announcement explaining how honoured everyone there is to continuously provide waste collection services to the citizens and industries of Kirkland.

Salts and Wegener have naturally built many strong relationships with the many people they’ve served over the years. Some encounters are simply casual conversations, while others are more interesting requests, such as grass cutting or vacuum changing. Salts has made friends with a widow in the area whom he occasionally brings flowers to and does household favours for, while Wegener has a special bond with a family that he’s watched grow up over the course of nearly thirty years.

Many children wave to the men as they drive their trucks by for each neighbourhood’s garbage collection. They’ve both expressed the pride they feel doing their jobs and maintaining the connections they’ve made, and for those reasons, the contract extension was a small miracle for them.