I'm rooting for these guys - it looks like their COO has been in waste management since 1999 (and, from the article, his family's been in it for decades). As a casual observer of "non-sexy" startups, I've noticed that these kinds of founding teams do well.
Returnbase (reverse logistics), CropMetrics (agtech), Weather Analytics (ag. insurance), and Loop Support (customer support, shameless plug) come to mind.
It's tough to "casually observe" startups because you can't flip through their 10-Ks, but you can think of individual startups metonymously - learn more about their industries, and then try to figure out why these startups are trying to use technology to make better products.
They will most certainly do well! They're essentially a Broker++ since they are treating the haulers as their customer too (or at least saying that). Brokerages have traditionally treated the haulers poorly so if they can get the relationship with the hauler right things should work out really well for them.
Either way I predict success. Down the line they'll be acquired by Waste Management, Republic, or Waste Connections to become another Oak Leaf.
What's next? An Uber-like service that will deliver gasoline directly to your car that is parked in your driveway?
Hmm... Come to think of it, that would actually be pretty sweet. I would never have to stop and fill up my gas tank! It would just always be full! A gas delivery truck would come in the middle of the night (according to a schedule I define using the mobile app), and it would fill up my car's tank and automatically bill my credit card!
Filld customers pay the lowest price of the three gas stations closest to their location plus a small delivery fee.
For example, if the three gas stations closest to you charge $2.62, $2.55 and $2.67 per gallon, you will pay $2.55. We purchase this pricing data from the Oil Price Indexing Service (OPIS), and we update it regularly.
How do they make money? I wonder how high the delivery fee is.
They're not paying the gas station price. They're likely paying bulk prices then just using the local prices as your price.
Edit: $3 for delivery generally and they're using F250 trucks. Call it 1.5t in the bed or about 400 gallons plus tank. They probably have a contract with the local bulk terminal so if you're paying 2.55, they might be paying 30% (no idea what this margin is) less or so. @400 us-gal if they make 30% on the gas plus $3 per 15gal tank, revenue would be in the $380/load range for an average of 26 tanks of gas per load.
Edit2: regarding the loss leader strategy, they still have to truck the gas to the station which adds overhead. By going direct to customer (again, assuming they're loading at the bulk terminal) they remove a couple middlemen who's position they then take.
Gas is actually a loss leader at many/most gas stations. My parents owned a gas station about 10 years ago and one of the reasons they sold it and got out of that business was because competition was so fierce that they had to sell gas at or below the bulk price they paid for it. In other words, they effectively lost a few pennies every time someone bought gas. All profit came from in-store sales of other items.
>Gas is actually a loss leader...all profit came from in-store sales
That and the increasing prevalence of electric cars, Uber, and other shifts are why the gas-delivery model will likely be unsuccessful over any reasonable duration.
The idea seems to be moving in the opposite direction as the rest of the world.
The parent's story is essentially universal in the US and has been for decades.
Almost no convenience stores make money on gasoline, unless they're operating a special setup (the convenience store chain Sheetz for example has tried to build out their own gasoline business to cure this problem). There are a few routine exceptions, usually involving either some kind of rare location (eg right outside an airport exit, usually operating under a special arrangement), or a rare event (something that causes gasoline to be in unusual demand / limited supply).
When I did the books for a gas station in Canada it was similar. This was a franchise location as well, so they had the parent company buying gas for them.
Profit on gas was measured in cents per liter, with premium giving the best margins. And by best I mean $0.023/L or $0.087/gal.
I don't think that "(no idea what the margin is)" is what OP meant by running the numbers.
Mostly a "pamper early adopters with VC money" operation I think, possibly with a profitability story (that may or may not turn out to be realistic) centered around high real estate value areas: in those places where the ground occupied by a gas pump and its accompanying infrastructure plays a significant role in the local fuel price, using public rights of way for mobile pumps is effectively a value transfer from the public to the pump operator.
Back during the original dotcom, when all anybody could think of was basically a mailorder shop with a website, I joked with friends how a "fuel.com" could be a great parody of contemporary startups and/or a fine participant in the hype wave.
I still think that sending pickup trucks to fill individual cars is stupid, but it's leaps and bounds less stupid than "mailorder fuel" would have been. A nice illustration of the difference between the current breed of VC money sinks and the dotcoms of old.
I don't disagree at all. My numbers should be in the ballpark but generous. If someone has more data sources they can link to, fire away.
I think the real takeaway here is that even at ~$400 per 25 cars refueled, it's not a super great market to be in. It's also kind of like starting a printing company during the 21st century (cough cough Vista Print). Yes, there's a sliver of margin to be had with aggressive automation and negotiation but at the end of the day, you'll be out of business in a couple decades when the underlying technology changes, in this case electric cars that can be charged at home.
On the other hand, it's likely that petrol stations will begin to close as electric cars become more and more widespread, but until literally no one uses petrol any more(and that will take a very long time) you can always make business by delivering fuel directly(Oh you have a 2010 vintage ICE car and the nearest operating petrol station is 50 miles away? we will bring fuel to you!)
Yea, based on the eia data it should all be ballpark but the calculation is there mostly just to serve as an example. You could shave a little off gas-per-fillup in retrospect because very few people will use 15gal exactly and few new car gas tanks are over 15gal but the $3 service charge balances that out somewhat. Based on the map on their site, it looks like their margins might be slimmer than what I calculated but they succeed by having a lot of customers in a very small area that they serve.
That ignores taxes which make up ~30% of retail price depending on the price of oil at the time.
Further, gas stations generally need to pay quite a bit to get gas shipped to them as it's heavy (12 gallons is over 75 pounds), dangerous, and often very far away.
Manhattan no longer has gas stations south of 12th street, and yet people pay > $400 for a parking space. This sounds like an ideal starting point for a burgeoning delivery service.
Delivering to a bunch of vehicles on one street or hitting a bunch of vehicles in one lot/garage is better than one fill per location.
It seems like they shouldn't be targeting consumers except as a means to target small businesses and municipal fleets.
Modern fuel pumps are slow compared to the old ones. (Seriously, if you stop at a gas station with the old style pumps it'll blow your mind how fast they are.) Sending someone to put 20gal in a van takes at least 20min assuming a few minutes driving. @ $9/hr that's the same labor cost as a $3 fee. Paying these people to come to you and fill your fleet of vans costs the same but is more convenient and ensures you get the lowest local price.
I swear business materialize out of thin air, when someone literally just thinks of them. How else can you explain that it seems like EVERY idea already has an app + business!
Much better than the previous entrant. These people have their trucks placarded ("1203") and run their people through the training required for fuel truck drivers. You really don't want Uber-level drivers driving fuel trucks.
Given Uber's history, I would guess they would find out where everybody associated with the fire department, police department, county, and state regulators live and then block any deliveries to them or their neighbors.
Fire Marshalls have to catch you before they can use their teeth.
These guys are going to war with mountain view city council as soon as it wakes up. Seems like once a week someone on the council is saying they're gonna "do something" about the private drivers with loads of fuel in the back of their truck, or the fact that airbnb isn't getting taxed. What "something" means and why "something" needs to be done has yet to be clarified.
This actually is kind of an "obvious" idea once you think about it considering that this is exactly what my oil company does. They monitor my oil tank and come fill it when its about half empty and leave the bill on the door and you can optionally keep a credit card on file for autopay if you want.
The convenience factor is really on point, I no longer think about oil at all, its always taken care of.
The company I work for does this :) We use cellular & network connections to do remote monitoring of tanks. It can be very valuable service for fuel delivery companies, since they can fill up on an as needed basis rather than driving out to a location only to find they only need to top up 5% of the tank.
I did that for years (called around) and potentially paying a small markup is totally worth the price of not having to think about oil. Plus, they gave me $150 off for signing up.
There's lots of reasons that you have beyond the normal amount of garbage or difficult to deal with garbage. It's really hard to get it removed if you need it on a short notice.
A lot of municipalities have limits refuse. For example in NYC you can no longer get rid of electronics in the regular trash. You're supposed to take them to a place that can deal with it. Fair enough. The problem is that there aren't many places and some of them are only open week days. Folks from outer burrows that cannot drive are not going to be able to do that.
Also, sometimes you need to get rid of a lot of stuff that you don't want to move when moving because you're going to get new stuff on the other side (bed, mattress). It'd be so much easier to call somebody up and have them just take it away on the last day of your lease.
>There's lots of reasons that you have beyond the normal amount of garbage or difficult to deal with garbage. It's really hard to get it removed if you need it on a short notice.
Apps are the "1-800-cheesy-mnemonic" for the new generation.
it is 100% the same formula. Start by hiding your real cost in weird price schemes. Advertise like crazy. ???. Profit.
It is a proven method. And it revamped for every generation. 1-800, app, "as seen on tv", catalogs, etc. And now you have subscription services of tangible goods for the millennials.
That's the first thing I thought, doesn't this exist? Side note, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK was on an interesting episode of NPR's "How I Built This" podcast (http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=523277830:523967624).
Just got a new bed (online order) a couple months ago, and paid a service to take the old one away... we have curbside pickup, but only a few times a year, so needed to pay the $90. I wound up shopping around as there was a range of $90-170 to retrieve a mattress and box. There's definitely room for on demand services for that... especially in larger populated areas.
Yup, this is a service that already exists in very informal ways. Check craigslist for "trash and junk removal".
Having had a garage I recently organized and about a pickup load full of trash/recyclables I would have absolutely loved such a service vs. trying to find someone non-flaky on CL to actually show up when they said they would.
That's what I did when I moved back from SF => NYC. But it occupied a few hours of my time to send emails, wait for responses, try to negotiate time / price. Time I did not have. If I could open a spend 10 minutes, it would be worthwhile in some situations.
I have had good luck getting rid of old things by posting them for free on Craigslist and leaving them outside. If it's at all usable someone usually comes by within an hour or two.
This isn't very uber-like, since it's only for businesses. I'd love to be able to easily get someone to pick up cardboard and other trash at my house. We're big users of Amazon Prime and also starting a business that involves a lot of large deliveries, so we're completely buried in cardboard and the expensive local garbage/recycling service cannot support us. We're ordering our second dumpster in less than a year to try to clear out.
They should consider residential too. Out where I am you have to haul your own trash to a few spots around the county. I don't mind, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd rather have access to a service like this.
I believe many of the refueling companies have shifted to servicing employees of big companies at their corporate parking lots since the economics are way better this way.
How do you verify the gas from the stations you stop at now?
The most thought I've put into it when I had a VW TDI was to fill up at a stations that were busy and more likely to have fresh fuel. A brand name station isn't a guarantee that the fuel is fresh if it is on the road less traveled.
That's a fair question to ask but I have some close friends working in the Petroleum industry and they insist on only getting gas from Chevron and Shell from the insider information they have. Not sure if it means much at all though.
Probably not. The gas from many other stations will come from the same refineries. And gasoline is not that perishable, I doubt that the car minds if it has been at the station for 1 week.
The QuikTrip chain in the South has signs that say they have "guaranteed gasoline". Apparently this means it won't hurt your engine: https://www.quiktrip.com/gasoline - but I like to think it means that they're guaranteeing their product is gasoline, because I'm easily amused.
I can already just call Got Junk and have them take most things. However, the canisters of paints and other crap that needs to be dropped at special locations? They won't take those.
Since I don't own a car (by choice), I'm essentially screwed. The disposal locations are only on very specific days with bad hours, and usually in the middle of nowhere.
It's the only thing I can't easily do without driving. Get me someone who will pick all that shit up and they'll get all my money.
While the paint canisters are definitely a doozy, I've successfully disposed of "weird" things by offering them to the masses via FreeCycle and Craigslist's "free" section. Someone is guaranteed to show up at your home in order to pick up the most useless of objects. I've given away awkwardly sized furniture, old barely working TVs, and other such crap. The capacity of humans to scramble for trash is truly breathtaking.
Thinking the same, this is not really an on-demand consumer focused service.
> "A high-tech garbage service may sound ridiculous to the uninitiated. But it’s no joke to customers like WeWork, Whole Foods and SoulCycle that have signed multi-year contracts ..."
> "TC: How do you charge? One fee for an unlimited number of on-demand pick-ups per month?
GL: We establish yearly contracts, charging so much per month for an office space after we do an audit on the business and establish that it generates, say, 50 bags of garbage in a set amount of time. Everything above that then is extra."
It's an unwritten societal law. Just like every coffee stand must include some sort of pun in the name, every news article about a startup must phrase the business model as $"{existingStartup} for {unrelatedProblem}."
Calling it 'Uber for garbage' does this business a great disservice.
I believe this will be a great great business and borrows nothing from Uber anymore than from Taskrabbit or Postmates. The domain experience needed to understand the whole logistic should have made Techcrunch think twice about that headline. But sure clicks and all that.
To residents - even in ""socialist"" europe businesses will have to pay, and often have the option of opting out of city waste pickup to private services.
That's what I was thinking.
I'm assuming they go above and beyond what the city may offer.
if you are a company like whole foods - you probably don't want trash sitting around until a city assigned garbage is ready to pick it up in a week. same with hotels, etc.
> I've never noticed this problem at a grocery outlet
I live down the street from a New York City grocery store. Once a week all their boxes and stale groceries wander out onto the sidewalk from where, at convenient times like 5pm or Midnight a garbage truck blocks traffic while making robot-sex sounds. Apparently, private garbage pick-up was axed when Fairways last went bankrupt.
Perhaps outside of the city, but at least in a place like NYC, there isn't room for a dumpster to be sitting around continuously. And the residents wouldn't like it either.
As others have noted the types of services vary widely by region and jurisdiction. Some have exclusive contracts with a single hauler to provide residential and commercial collection. Some have their own gov owned/operated fleet. Some contract for residential and let commercial have an open market.
The wild variety of situations means that large companies don't want to have to wade through all the possibilities at each of their locations and instead hire a broker to manage their waste at all sites. The broker then works out how to get them service everywhere and uses their domain knowledge to get a decent price from the hauler where negotiation is possible.
It appears to me that these guys are a Broker++ since they are building meaningful relationships with the haulers that service their customers. As they say in the article they have two customers (the waste producer, and the waste hauler). This is definitely a departure from the typical broker that treat the haulers poorly (delaying payments, short paying, never paying, ridiculous requirements, etc for the haulers). I can see it working out really well for them if haulers are comfortable letting this company inject themselves into their trucks via an app.
FYI - I work in the industry writing software for independent waste haulers. Before that I operated my family's waste hauling operation in CA. We offered 1x week residential and up to 6x per week commercial collection as part of an exclusive contract with the City. Our customers paid us directly but that's not always the case with city contracts.
Yes and no. My garbage company will only pick up anything that fits in our issued garbage bins. We can make an appointment for larger items, like an old couch, picked up for an extra fee. But in that case there isn't much difference except the Uber for garbage would be faster/easier to use. In addition as others have pointed out, businesses usually have to set up their own contracts.
seeing that they are in Atlanta I can only offer my experience living in the metro area. Suburban pickup is a multitude of private haulers, some with full size trucks and others running the mini style. There are even some non traditional haulers. Combine with all the custom haulers; leave dumpsters on site, pick up and haul on demand, etc, so there is certainly a market.
two dumps near me serve all these haulers and from just talking to a few to reading their websites many have government contracts as well. the local schools have branded dumpsters!
reading the article the one service which looks cool is giving customers assurance of where their waste goes so that they in turn can use this as a halo effect when getting customers for their own service. plus if you could effectively track and route specific types of recyclables surely there is profit in it
Yes, however for example I live in an unincorporated area and have to either contract my own trash removal, or haul it myself to a county trash site and pay by the bag to throw it away.
I pay about $25/month for weekly pickup. Some weeks I have less trash and could skip the pickup, but that doesn't save me any money. Some weeks I forget to set it out for pickup on the designated day and I have to wait until the next week.
If I could get my trash picked up on demand whenever I have a full bin that would be something I'd seriously look at. I think it's a great idea.
Unfortunately I think it would end up being more expensive. No way ad-hoc pickup out in a rural area is going to be cheaper than a truck sweeping through the area once a week and servicing all the houses on one trip.
I think most people would be surprised to learn what their city actually provides.
For example, my waste service will drop off a dumpster for your use for up to a week. They'll do that, for free, twice a year. I've never seen anyone else on my street use this service, but I have several times.
They'll also do electronic recycling (call and they'll tell you when they can pick it up) and the same for massive piles of lawn clippings. I also make use of the lawn clippings pick up yearly, when I'm doing major work on the yard.
It really depends on the city, and even where in the city. At my last house, I had to contract my own waste service of my choice. When I moved, the erm, 'subcity', if that's a word, provides it as a perk.
I just did this at my moms house. But we called the people that do the weekly trash service. For 20 bucks they will drop off a large dumpster and leave it there for a week. And then they will pick it up for 40 dollars.
And this is large dumpster like you find behind grocery stores.
My jaw dropped when I saw the headline thinking an idea of mine had not fell on deaf ears. Then I realized it was just another instance of parallel development of ideas. Over two years ago when I was living in a rice farming village in Java, Indonesia, and was very upset about all the trash being put in pits or burned since there was no garbage pickup I thought of an 'Uber for garbage' app and business model. The garbage was becoming worse, because people were hauling goods back to their village an opening up small stands with mostly junk - soda, candy and plastic toys, and nowhere to send the waste.
Recyclers or garbage pickup could become efficient and lucrative for the small truck recyclers and scrappers, if villages could request a pickup and any available driver could accept and create his route for the day. Uber for garbage pickup and recycling was how I referred to it to people at airports, and anybody who would listen.
Their idea is similar but more of a money-maker catering to first world businesses like Whole Foods. I hope it can branch out and become successful in the villages around the world for the local economies too. I wish them luck and prosperity.
Currently renovating my home, while maintaining a full-time position and being a dad, blah, blah, blah. Point is, I don't have a lot of time, but with focus can accomplish one messy project after another over time.
Renting a dumpster will go unused for most of the time I've rented it for; it'll also cost $400-$500 it seems.
I don't have an HOA, but I'd bet I'd only be able to choose from the nicest (read: pricy-est) waste management companies and have little time with it in my driveway.
Getting those "Bagster" things is pretty cool, but kinda steep considering I have to buy the bag(s) and each one will cost $100-$150 to remove.
This is a much better solution than using my 2-car garage as a holding tank until I get a "dumpster's worth" of crap to throw away.
While people are put off by "Uber for X", sometimes it just makes sense, and makes people's lives better.
Reading the article, this seems geared towards commercial customers. Their pricing model is based on yearly contracts...
As someone who has used the Bagster myself, I found it very convenient and easy to use. Purchase the bag, go online to the website, pay and schedule the pickup. I thought the price was fair, compared to the alternatives.
I want this for residential. Instead of having a "trash day" I wait until my garbage can is full, click a button on my app, and tomorrow morning someone comes and picks up my trash.
Now the trash can needs to be powered on, connected to my wifi network - does my wifi reach to the curb where I leave my cans? - and I'm locked in to the cans provided by the trash company.
> and I'm locked in to the cans provided by the trash company.
Municipal trash contracts are frequently locking you into cans provided by the trash company already -- they do it to ensure compatibility with the side load machinery, and also so they can charge you based on use; if you produce more waste on a weekly basis, you need to order a larger bin; if you produce less, you can request a smaller bin.
a firmware update has failed on your can, causing your license key to not authenticate to the new api, resulting in a locked lid and license violation fees being added to your account
No need for wifi -- install a 3G modem. Very little data to transmit. The super cans could also signal the garbage people if the batteries are running low.
Is this not already a thing? I needed an old chair disposed of a few days ago, googled "Seattle Trash Removal", got like 10 results, and the next day somebody came by with a truck and took my chair away. Is this company different because they have an app? Because they offer speedier pickup?
I needed a ride to the airport, I googled "taxi company," got like 10 results, and the next morning a car was waiting for me. Why do we need Uber? Just because it has an app?
because they have an app and are probably going to be using unlicensed "contractors" to dump your garbage in unlicensed locations and call it industry disruption. I can already see the lawsuits.
This is why we have the current level of regulation in the waste industry. It has lead to exclusive contracts with haulers that have to report their weights to a local authority. There are many areas with non-exclusive contracts too that allow some appearance of competition, but again only haulers that comply with a significant set of rules (and pay fees) are able to operate in the area.
It's a double edged sword for sure. I'd love to see more open and creative competition in the industry, but since disposal and transportation costs make up such a huge % of a hauler's expenses there will certainly be corrupt entities dumping waste in a canyon somewhere just outside of your community.
Tracking the waste from source to destination accurately and in a way that people can truly trust will certainly be a key to success here. It's worth noting that it is still very likely that some contracted and "compliant" haulers are doing things with your waste that they shouldn't. So that's another place that a start up could potentially differentiate themselves.
"mid-size, independent haulers" in NYC are truly awful drivers. They regularly violate every single rule of the road— I recently saw one signal a right turn, then proceed to turn left and pull a 360 in the intersection while almost hitting a motorcyclist.
Then this driver drove the wrong way down the road in order to a get a bit closer to a load of garbage without having to go around the block.
For residential there's already companies like Junk King, 1-800=Got-Junk and the like. I moved twice in the last seven months and made use of a pickup service like this each time. Admittedly they might not be available in the moment but I had no problem with next day service.
I pay roughly a 50% income tax, and in spite of that municipal garbage collection is, well, garbage.
Regular waste is easy enough: weekly collection is OK. Larger items which can be incinerated are OK-ish: need to make an appointment two weeks in advance, and pay by weight.
Anything else and I'm screwed. I'd like to get rid of a metal ladder, but it can't be incinerated. I'm supposed to take it to a municipal recycling centre, but I can't because it's too heavy and I don't drive.
Yet this same ladder, years ago, was delivered to my doorstep after a one-click purchase on some website. Why shouldn't I have a one-click disposal?
Same here. My municipal trash service is awful, and they increase the price every year without making the service better, probably because f-you. They could seriously use some competition.
1. Motor oil, electronics, toxic waste: They say you can't throw them away with the garbage but your only other alternative is to take time out of your weekday to drive that stuff to some government center somewhere (during business hours--I suppose you're not supposed to have a job).
2. Large items that can't fit in the trash can: There are apparently several special times a year when these things will be picked up, but only when several planets align and it's a weekday. You need to place it exactly on the right spot next to the curb, it needs to fit into a certain dimension and be under a certain weight or they'll leave it there and you need to wait for the next blue moon to come along in order to dispose it.
3. Anything else you need to get rid of that doesn't align with the garbage company's tight requirements: $50-100 trip to the dump.
I've had the best luck by just putting stuff in my front lawn with a big red "FREE" sign on it. People will scavenge ANYTHING. I've gotten rid of piles of dirt this way.
> they increase the price every year without making the service better
Inflation?
EDIT: Not sure I understand the downvotes. The cost of milk goes up every year too, and it doesn't get any better. Between inflation and unsustainable municipal expenditures (e.g. pension plans), it's not surprising that trash service follows the same MO.
Depends on the municipal government. Some municipal governments are truly corrupt and inefficient, so there might be rent seeking and increases in all sorts of costs.
Because it doesn't happen where you live doesn't mean it doesn't happen where he lives.
> 1. Motor oil, electronics, toxic waste: They say you can't throw them away with the garbage but your only other alternative is to take time out of your weekday to drive that stuff to some government center somewhere (during business hours--I suppose you're not supposed to have a job).
or you could reduce your use of those items.
I do and I don't like to pay your toxic garbage and used batteries garbage collection for you.
Everywhere I've lived in the U.S. has a periodic oversized/miscellaneous waste pickup day where they will pick up almost anything that doesn't go in the normal trash, for free. Well, by free I mean for no existing charge above whatever you might already pay as a waste fee or tax. I'm not sure where you live so it's possible this doesn't exist everywhere though (it might only be a U.S. thing?).
The everything-else waste pickup day will take bulky things that don't go in the normal trash or recycling: ladders, washing machines, couches, desks, lamps, tires, bicycles, sewing machines, etc.
For example, Houston has this kind of everything-else pickup 6 times a year. There's once a month pickup of oversized waste of two kinds. It takes tree-related waste in odd-numbered months, and non-tree-related waste in even-numbered months: https://houstontx.gov/solidwaste/treewaste.html
Our city handles this twice a year, they work something out with the regular trash people; who otherwise will only take things if they fit inside their robot-operated arm things.
This is also when scrap hunters drive by with their trailers looking for resale items.
From what I can find online, it seems to be fairly common in California too, at least in the larger cities, though some require you to call to schedule a pickup rather than it being a regularly scheduled day. Usually googling for "[city] bulky item pickup" will find the info, if it exists.
Have this near where I live, but wish there was just a place to take it throughout the year. Don't like having to keep stuff around for ages until one of those days comes around.
This works in major cities with a self-sustaining population of scrappers.
Chicago trash service is utterly amazing. Literally anything that fits in your house you put in the alley and either the scrappers take it within hours, or the trash men haul it away without complaint.
Other cities I lived in were atrocious. You'd be looked at crazy if you had anything remotely considered an abnormal need. Such as traveling a lot and not being able to put your trash bin out every single week for pickup (as you'd be fined daily for leaving it on the street). Something stupidly that simple is exceedingly hard in most places in the US - and picking up large items is usually an even worse experience.
Came here to say just that. I've seen entire living room sets put out in the alley and collected by Streets & Sanitation as if entirely routine. We did get a $10/month garbage fee added last year but it's still a bargain to have literally anything you put out back magically disappear.
There are plenty of neighborhoods where you'll be fined by the HOA for doing that. Just "tossing in the front yard" isn't a feasible sustainable solution. Anyway if he's paying 50% in income taxes then it's unlikely he even lives in a neighborhood where junk collectors drive around
I don't think I could live in an HOA even if I was paid to. Those things are atrocities. To anyone in the market for buying a home, watch out for those and never buy one if it's under an HOA. You can find lots of horror stories about them online with a quick search.
A good tip for anyone suffering through one: they can't legally interfere with amateur radio towers, so if you're dissatisfied with having to live with your HOA, you can put up as big of an amateur radio tower as you can afford and they can't do anything about it.
At 50% tax bracket that's exactly the neighborhood scrappers want to be in. Only problem is if it's a gated community. Then you have to pay for what the rest of us (who actually rub shoulders with the world) get for free :)
HOAs can issue fines? That's madness. I'll get fined for putting trash on my curb on the wrong day of the week, or the wrong kind of trash, but it'll be by my local government's very efficient income generators/police.
Where I live, if you leave anything large and metal by the curb on trash day, scrappers will come take it within hours. :) Hazardous waste is a big problem though.
Even with a bracket system, your effective tax rate will asymptotically approach the percentage of the highest bracket as you make more and more money. Given "centre," I assume this person doesn't live in the US, and many places have higher tax brackets than the US does, including some well in excess of 50%. Also they may not have a federal vs. local distinction, etc., etc.
"The Personal Income Tax Rate in Sweden stands at 57.10 percent. Personal Income Tax Rate in Sweden averaged 56.31 percent from 1995 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 61.40 percent in 1996 and a record low of 51.50 percent in 2000."
Effective federal plus effective state plus payroll plus effective local (income plus property) can approach 50% in the US. Average sales tax paid on post-tax income to state and local can push it over. But yes, only a fraction of it is municipal.
In spite of having tax funded garbage collection I often have trouble getting rid of certain things. Large items are collected infrequently and I might not want that sitting in my yard for a week or more awaiting pickup. Similarly, car batteries or other things that have special disposal rules can be difficult to find that information easily when it's something you deal with very infrequently. A service like this could help with that and I'd be happy to pay someone a few bucks to solve this problem for me.
It really is bad government. The city council should make a tender and have the local utility come and collect big items for free. That's how it works in the European city I come from. And the utility taxes are all but high.
I think the free service was born out of despair for people consistently leaving big trash on the roadside. While I understand you as I don't produce big trash myself, I guess it's still better to just pay a little more and get rid of the bigger problems having trash on the roadside would bring.
New York City fines people $100 to $400 for using improper receptacles, leaving receptacles uncovered, putting trash in front of others' buildings and/or leaving loose rubbish lying about [1]. Note that these can accumulate, e.g. if you put loose trash in front of someone else's building in an improper receptacle, that could be $300 to $1,000 of fines.
Those fines pay for enforcement. They also pay for picking up garbage dumped by unknown persons. This model shifts the burden from everyone to just the offenders. I find it preferable to small households subsidising big ones.
How do you demonstrate that the fridge left on the side of a public road, even if close to someone's home, actually belonged to someone? The examples that you mention are even harder to enforce. Cameras?
My house has never had a fire, so why should I pay for a fire department in my neighborhood?
That's what your argument basically boils down to.
Obviously it's not in our collective best interest to have trash accumulate on the streets. So we all end up paying for it collectively, regardless of how much we consume the service as individuals.
I have less control over whether my house lights on fire than if I make lots of trash. Also, if my house starts burning, it's an immediate threat to my neighbours' safety. If I leave trash outside, it's a less-immediate threat to their comfort.
Economically, clean streets are non-rivalrous (my clean street costs little more than my neighbor's) and retroactively excludable (through fines). This makes it a public enterprise good, akin to mail or trains [1].
Case in point: mattress and A/C sellers in New York City dispose of your old mattress or A/C for you. If pick-up of such things were free, fewer would do that. One response might be to regulate every thing one might purchase that could produce big trash. The other is to just make people who choose to make big trash pay for it.
But I already do have large item pick-up funded by the city or whatever. I basically never use that service and have no idea when it is. My standard operating procedure is to just put this large eyesore out in my front yard and eventually the government will come pick it up. Either that, or often times private citizens will recycle whatever it is for money.
So if this service rolls out in my area, I can either leave this large piece of garbage in my yard for a week or so waiting for the government to come pick it up, or I can open an app on my phone and have someone pick it up today.
Check with your city, if Waste Management pickups up your garbage you might have three free pickups a year on top of the yearly large item pickup. For the scheduled ones, we usually get a mailer a few weeks before they come up.
Here's the description from a random city:
For items that are too large to fit into the trash cart, residents may request the free pick up of household bulky goods three times per year. We will retrieve up to four large items such as furniture, appliances or up to 20 plastic bags of refuse or bundles of yard waste (less than 50 pounds each) for each request. Advance notice is required. To schedule a free bulky goods pick up, please contact Waste Management...
Why should they? If there are dangerous items to be disposed that 99.99% of the people on a given garbage day don't throw out, should the other people subsidize the disposal? Most residents are not throwing out things that need special care. By making the price more transparent, you can incentivize people to use fewer items that are toxic or bad for the environment.
The other side of the argument is that people simply won't do it. If you make it difficult to dispose of used motor oil, people will just put it in their regular trash bags and it will wind up in a land fill where it's dangerous.
The towns around where I grew up used to make you pay money to get rid of metal (!!!!). Consequently it wasn't uncommon to find washing machines and old rims in random places. Then a scrap place opened up, appliances stopped showing up on the side of the road and the scrap place that only took copper quickly got ran out of business.
People don't want to dump stuff illegally, it's just the least worst option in the moment.
I have zero pickups apart from household trash, so broken tv's, those bushes I cut down, or huge boxes etc I have to drive to the recycling place (15 min drive).
I'd happily pay for a service to take it there but there is a catch 22: as an individual I already paid (through taxes) to leave stuff. Companies have not - so if I pay a company to take my things there, I'd also pay twice to leave the stuff there as they can't leave my stuff "for me". If I could somehow give a transport company the right to use my free (tax paid) recycling/dumping right then this would work here. Without that, can't work for individuals. Would work perfectly for businesses though.
I'm running into this issue right now. I'm moving, but I'm kind of stuck with leaving the couch inside instead of being able to put it out on the curb because it's illegal to leave large items on the curb, but large item pickup also doesn't happen until next Tuesday.
Many towns in New Hampshire with spread out population do not want to pay for garbage pickup. Everyone brings everything to the dump themselves. These people "self-uber for garbage" as they say.
Some rich folks pay companies like Waste Management to do it for them.
Makes sense and I've seen it in mountain & destination communities where a lot of the trash is from transients. However, it's possible that could lead to people not disposing of trash properly or burning it. My grandma used to burn her trash when she lived on a farm.
Taxes are extremely high in my area, especially small business nickle and dime taxes. It may shock you to hear my employees spend a minimum of 2 hours every two weeks (to say nothing of the distress of spending time on hold and dealing with unaccountable government agencies) on the phone yelling about non-compliance of pickup and outright lies by the waste management companies about how they do their jobs.
In theory I certainly agree with you. In practice, these agencies and government-backed crony companies have zero accountability, zero recourse, and no customer service.
That makes it sound a lot less stupid. The Uber comparison strongly implies that it is consumer focused, and intended to privatize an existing public service (mass transit in that case).
Yes, actually, at least for basic pickup. I'd support it for big/dangerous items as well. It is really easy to let that trash bill go if you get poor, and folks tend to dump things when convenient or burn things that shouldn't really be burned to get rid of their trash. They leave large items in rentals they are moving out of and put dangerous items in with the regular trash.
Sure, communal pickup is flawed - but so far, it seems to be the better solution.
The trash bill for the poor is that for weekly pickup. Luckily, many poor folks live in cities, where the cost is included in taxes. Get outside city limits in somewhere like Indiana, and you have to pay.
In the socialist hell-hole (/s) I live in, I pay taxes for a fairly comprehensive trash and recycling service run by my local government. The service operates weekly. However, they only take care of trash that fits into their standardised trash bags or containers. They will not pick up anything that is too heavy for their workers to lift, such as a broken TV, or too big for their trucks, such as a mattress. Thus, there are additional private services here that have sprung up to take care of non-standard trash, and they do quite well out of it.
I found out first hand that getting my city to dispose of large objects (in my case a box spring) isn't a fun process. I didn't have the means to get it to the dump myself so I had to print off a request for a special collection, mail it in with a check for the fee for said collection, and call at a later time to confirm that they had received my request. More than a week after I decided I wanted to get rid of it they came and picked it up.
In the future many services might be operated by corporations that started as "disruptive". Behind every VC, and inside the Silicon Valley, there is a big and untold libertarian agenda.
I think government will not seize the opportunity to organize itself using internet technologies, for the simple reason that people will complain about surveillance (government slowness and red carpets would also be an issue).
Wouldn't it be better if we were allowed to interact voluntarily? Pay for what we wanted and used, and support people and causes through charity instead of under duress?
I was surprised that taxes cover garbage pickup in some cities. I'm in Portland, Oregon and private collectors are assigned to various parts of the city with regulated fees. You choose your can size, frequency, etc. and pay the collector.
In St Paul, MN, we have private trash collection. This results in one or two garbage trucks coming down every street, every single day. The wear on the streets, and especially the alleyways, is incredible. They have to repave them every other year. But we can't have municipal trash collection because "free market" or some crap. Ugh.
In many cities there are assistance programs for the elderly, etc. who are truly broke but fines do work well for negligent landlords, fallow properties, etc.
Right, but the punishment for not paying taxes is a lot harsher than seems reasonable for someone who just doesn't pay their garbage-pickup bill. It feels weird for those to be the same thing.
I'm gonna guess it'll be treated much like water bills (when the city owns the water processing, anyway). Threaten to call the health authority and child protective services if you don't pay the bill (after all, living in a home full of waste is a health hazard). Put liens on your house and/or car, eventually taking you to court and possibly garnishing your wages. In the meantime, no water service and they'll probably alert other utilities to your lack of payment so you'll either not get turned on or have to pay a deposit.
In theory perhaps, but every explanation I've heard for how such a society would work has so many holes that they only work for a small subset of real-life cases, and wouldn't scale at all.
I'm sure it would work great for a small community of up to a couple of hundred carefully selected individuals, but I think anyone who thinks it would work for general society is a bit blinded by their ideology.
In the end, the only forms of Government that have worked at scale have centralised governance, and democratic Governments seem to be the least-worst workable systems.
Not really, no. These things work at scale, and it would be incredibly difficult to find a price that works for everyone without it also taking into account their income, or similar. So... a tax.
Governments are a default state produced by groups of humans. They are inevitable. Making them better is incredibly hard work, but that is the only option.
Often times, they are improved by working outside the system itself, it seems. So there are some interesting options for tackling this hard problem. The company mentioned in the article may turn out to be a great example of this.
Governments do come in many forms, with varying size, composition, and effectiveness. However, the ancap vision of no government and everything done by "voluntary" contract has no meaningful basis in reality at this point, as far as I can tell.
I agree with you re. anarcho-capitalism. I think that a state is a prerequisite for capitalism.
But that doesn't mean you couldn't a) pare back the state to the bare minimum functionality (which doesn't include garbage collection, IMO) and fund it voluntarily.
> But that doesn't mean you couldn't a) pare back the state to the bare minimum functionality (which doesn't include garbage collection, IMO) and fund it voluntarily.
You could do that with the entity called “the state”, but that entity would no longer be the state or government, no matter what it was called. (It might be an arm of the real government, which might consist of entities voluntarily funding the “state” which themselves exercise coercive, in practice, extraction of wealth, or it might be an irrelevant figurehead.)
I'm talking about larger groups of humans. Things are very different when you have only a few hundred humans or less. Dunbar's number[1] is an important factor here.
As an anarcho-capitalist, I'd be really keen on a "HumbleBundle" type government funding model. E.g. you don't get to pick if you pay taxes, but you do get to pick which parts of the state get what proportion of your taxes. E.g. 30% welfare, 0% military, 70% infrastructure development.
You could even argue that such an arrangement is voluntary in a narrow definition of a term. Definitely not one to satisfy most libertarians/anarcho-capitalists, but good enough for us to say we're not living in a state where we have absolutely no power over the state's spending.
How does that resolve? If I pay 0% to the military, but the US gets a favorable trade deal b/c theyre worried for invasion, do I get the reward without any skin in the game?
Wouldn't a savvy gamesman just vote for their own self-interest?
Perhaps that could be a feature? Everyone voting not just for their own self-interest, but for the things they think are important government features. Over the entire populace, it'll average out and their gaming won't amount to much.
The idea is that it's more "expressive" than one person = one vote. And it's more manageable than pure direct-democracy. Look, you could fiddle with things and have "minimum" amounts so that people can't completely break a government feature if they don't like it. E.g. 100% of people voting to have 0 military spending. But, if that were to happen, is that not a hint to politicians that none of the voting populace wants military spending?
To me it's another way to give more power to the individuals, rather than leaving it solely in the grasp of politicians.
Do you think it's desirable to give more power to individuals? Personally, I think enlightened despotism is probably the best form of government in terms of fairness, efficiency, etc.
In the US (a democratic republic), I see that the decision makers act in their own short term self-interest.
The risk with an enlightened despot (think typical corporate structure) is that the person at the top can really cause damage, because they don't have checks on what they can do. We can imagine the downside right now -- the strength of the republic is currently being stress tested to see if it can salvage itself simply by resistance, friction, and inefficiency to prevent Mr. Trump from destroying so much.
No, it wouldn't, because that's the fantasy that libertarians always push that has no historical or contemporary basis for working as a society.
Sorry for being grumpy, but this is as useful a contribution as "Wouldn't it be better if we harnessed the power of house-elves to magic away our trash?"
... except that the vast majority of what society does is voluntary.
To extend your analogy: "The magic house-elves are already making our cars, writing our software, and growing our food. I wonder if we should pay them a bit more to cart away our trash too."
The house-elves shouldn't be doing the law enforcement or the Government (and in fact they _are_ right now, e.g. in the case of for-profit prisons and the Fed, and it's a disaster). But they're a bit under-utilised right now in some areas :)
It's a shame government services are normally junk (pun unintended). That's my experience.
Off the top of my head: I would pay twice for x. Given how bad gov services are.
Edit: Cool downvotes Marxist bros. Our national health service can't be super inefficient (I'm just about to go on a waiting list for a year) & my rubbish collection can't have just halved the amount of trash they take every two weeks. You're right!
Marxism and socialism are often clumped together in these sorts of discussions. They both happen to be examples of pretty-bad and un-free systems of government.
I think it will really depend on how they approach and work with the haulers. It sounds like they are providing them with an app that will help them manage their other accounts more efficiently so some haulers might really enjoy the trade off.
Also, it's important to view this initiative as a rebirth of the waste broker. They're already super common in the industry handling the waste collection services for all the locations of large corporations, they negotiate with haulers to service each site then make sure services are performed. They tack on a fee for streamlining/managing this service for each company.
One of the larger brokers was purchased by Waste Management a few years ago. Since WM is a hauler too, they're now gathering tons of data about each market that can be used when bidding against smaller/independent haulers. Lot's of haulers would be happy to help another broker succeed to get WM out of their affairs.
Coincidentally, I just listened the pitch podcast S2 E3 where the company Industrial Organics was also describing themselves as Uber for Garbage. However, they are niching into garbage from restaurant kitchens.
A YCombinator S09 company was in this market, Tuxebo. They were looking to connect people to local companies that offered refuse collection and disposal, etc.
From that it looks like their domain isn't in use now so my assumption is they closed up shop. Does anyone know if they pivoted further out of refuse market or were acquired by someone?
This is an awesome idea and if I had known about it would have used it last month. My garbage creation varies widely from next to nothing (default state) to significantly more than fits in a single pickup (lots of guests, back to back parties, etc). I'd pay a premium to get rid of the extra trash the next day rather than waiting till the next local pickup or spacing it out myself. Ditto for paying less for less often pickups.
If they started in New York and their major customers tend to be other flashy companies I seriously worry about their long term viability. I know that tech folks like to think they have the answer to everything, especially with asset-light software based companies, but for very many reasons waste management in the North East isn't that simple.
While potentially a useful service for a consumer, the majority of waste is generated by businesses, who already have access to comparable services with their current provider (except when a CRT tv is involved!)
Seems this company raised based off an old business model of 1800 Got Junk and Junk King, on the coat tails of Rubicon Global's massive fundraising amount.
I love this idea. Waste Management is the big player in my region, and I've been very dissatisfied with them. They'll jack up the prices, I have no confidence that their 'single stream' collection results in effective recycling, and their pricing is completely opaque.
This is a classic disruptive solution and I wish them the best!
I live in a city with 4 competing trash services, WM being one of the largest. There's been countless small players start up here, and it really is a lucrative business. WM bought them all.
Out of all the Uber for X things I have heard about this actually sounds viable. Having to go out and buy garbage stickers for random things is annoying. If I just have an app on my phone to do this not only would the experience would be better but I would have better feedback to assess if the thing I am throwing out would be accepted.
You know, waste management is not so trivial in some cases.
Some items are classified as hazardous materials, and it's hard to get rid of them. You need to do a dump run, but many platforms do not allow you to do business involving hazardous materials (e.g: Craigslist).
I hope they have an answer to that. e.g: Getting rid of batteries and such.
I really like this idea since, being "An Uber", they most certainly take a destination address. "Please go dump this garbage on city hall!". I just hope I don't have to leave my phone in the bag.
I recently had to get rid of a lot of concrete and lumber. Turns out it's a big pain and really expensive. Wouldn't be surprised if something like this took off.
how is garbage pickup fit with the on-demand model? How many people's garbage generation rate vary so much from cycle to cycle to make an on demand model worth while?
> A high-tech garbage service may sound ridiculous to the uninitiated. But it’s no joke to customers like WeWork, Whole Foods and SoulCycle that have signed multi-year contracts in exchange for RTS’s flexible pricing options, along with notifications about when a truck has arrived and reports about exactly where their waste is being sent.
Their target seems to be commercial waste removal, which seems like a better play than residential.
> Investors like that it’s an asset-light business, too. Instead of purchasing its own trucks, RTS is partnering with a growing number of mid-size, independent haulers
Please, son. The Bezos Whole Foods don't pay no externalities!
