This isn't about them being a trashman, it's about me being a trashman. You see I didn't call Republic Services to come pick up my icky unwanteds, I called them to find out where I could dump them myself. I got an address in Compton, I took a UHaul truck full of trash, garbage, old furniture and a 12 year old flat screen that I paid 1400 for.
There's nothing weirder than sitting in line between two garbage trucks. That's what I did for about 15 minutes at the West gate of the facility in Compton. When it was my turn, I pulled up my truck onto the scale (whoo a little bouncy there) got out and talked to the man in the booth. He told me that it costs 115 per ton to dump my stuff, asked me what I had to get rid of and directed me to a lane in the yard.
I have never been to a landfill or a dump, but I have fed pigs. This dump does not smell as bad as a pig sty, which isn't saying much. Basically it smells like old garbage, and of course there are gulls crawling all over the place. There is a giant concrete structure with 6 lanes. Garbage trucks are in the noisy process of dumping their contents and somewhere in the huge pit below, a bulldozer roars and scrapes. Finally the boss directs me over to lane six and says dump it here. I'm a little hesitant because all I can see is a huge pile of old mattresses. Dude, I have wood and steel.
I put on my gloves and my son and I start tossing junk out of the back of the 17 foot UHaul truck into a growing mess behind it. I gotta tell you it's a manly feeling to watch an old bookcase split into pieces when you give it the heave ho onto the concrete. It's all noise and destruction. And stink. Yeah lots of stink too. We had gloves but not masks. Despite the smell, and perhaps because of it, I experienced a kind of bourgeois cleansing watching that old Samsung get dashed to bits.
It took about 10 minutes to send about 1000 pounds of junk to wherever it goes from here. I tell you it's quite an invigorating bit of exercise. We weighed out and got our receipt. Man that was fun.
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