Priority Waste offers explanation, details on transition, pickup delays
By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
OXFORD — Trash has not been picked up on time at various locations throughout the Village of Oxford since the Fourth of July – three days after GFL, the village’s former waste hauler, sold the village’s route to current hauler Priority Waste, said village Manager Joe Madore.
Village council members and administrators discussed the situation during their meeting on Sept. 10.
While everything else in the contract remained the same when it was picked up by Priority Waste, Madore told the Oxford Leader after the meeting that pick up has been at least one day late since the first week of July.
For this reason, Madore said the village gets eight to 10 calls per day about trash. A frequent complaint being that garbage is sitting out longer than expected, leading to animals tearing bags apart.
Another complaint is difficulty in putting trash out on time. If residents assume collection will be one day late and take their trash out accordingly, Madore said they risk collection being on time and missing that week’s collection entirely.
“If you were to ask me if I think this is going to get better in the next month, or two or three, my answer would be no,” Madore said.
Priority Waste did not return phone calls or emails from the Oxford Leader requesting comment by press time.
Madore thinks part of the problem is that smaller communities matter less to Priority Waste. While Oxford has around 1,100 stops and others have as many as 26,000, “who do they care more about?” he said.
Oxford Village Attorney Bob Davis acknowledged Priority has had difficulty with their asset purchase agreement and conditions of assets, he also said he “sat through about 20 meetings” between Priority and other communities “trying to broker communication and get things in order.”
This has been difficult, according to Davis.
“There’s lots of communities with lots of complaints,” Davis said.
Communication has proved difficult on Madore’s end as well. If Priority does not perform well, Madore said, according to the contract, he has to send Priority a letter explaining why. From there, Priority has seven days to correct their performance. If it is not corrected, Oxford can get out of the contract.
Those seven days have come and gone, according to Madore.
Meanwhile, Davis said he and Madore have been working to have alternative haulers in place in case “we don’t like the way this goes.”
The two have been “informally talking to other service providers” to take over trash collection with no rate increases to the community, and to fulfill the balance of the contract.
While Davis believes Oxford “might” see the situation improve under Priority Waste, he said he agrees with Madore that “I don’t think it’s ever going to be what you signed up for.”
“You deserve trash collection, timely, on the date designated,” Davis said. “You deserve a route supervisor who checks in with the community, and if we don’t get that soon, we are prepared to have alternatives,” Davis said.
Collection was late again as of the afternoon of Sept. 19. The village contracted with GFL from 2016 through 2024.
Priority Waste’s Director of Public Relations and Government Affairs Matt Allen said the reason for Priority’s performance is the condition GFL’s assets were left in when Priority acquired them.
“The degree of neglect and sabotage that we faced in the beginning was daunting,” Allen said, “But we didn’t shy away from it. We didn’t publicize it in the beginning, which scared everybody.”
Sixty days before GFL’s closing, there was a due diligence period where “full stock” was taken of rolling assets to be delivered to Priority. Of the approximately 410 garbage trucks, Allen said around 60 were deemed not to be in road worthy condition. This left around 360 to 370 trucks thought to have been able to be used immediately by Priority to service around 700,000 people.
In reality, Allen said 212 trucks were not road worthy.
Fuel lines were broken, braking systems and engines did not work, axle pins were removed, intentional damage was done to hydraulic lines and pistons cylinders, trucks were cannibalized for parts, and more, Allen said.
“(In) about two dozen cases, there was human defecation left inside of the cabs, so on and so forth,” Allen said. “So, some actions of some very malicious and rogue employees did a tremendous amount of damage.”
By contract, Allen said GFL was supposed to notify all 73 of their communities that they were selling their assets, and they were being bought out by Priority. From there, Priority was supposed to acknowledge that GFL’s contracts were sold to them and that operations would resume based on the conditions of those contracts.
This process took place “with the contractual assumption that (Priority) would be delivered approximately 410 functioning trucks,” Allen said.
Plus, when GFL took over, many communities were two to three weeks behind on their services, and some as many as six. Meaning, when they took over, Priority Waste was three to seven weeks behind, according to Allen.
“So, we were there to fix the problem,” Allen said. “We weren’t the problem.”
From there, Allen said it would take around three weeks to catch up, and 60 to 90 days from there to get everyone up to operations based on the condition the trucks were left in.
The 90 days will be up on Oct. 4, Allen said.
In addition to sending hundreds of trucks across Michigan and the Midwest for repair and leasing trucks to make up for what was missing, Allen said Priority Waste has been working weekends since July 1, to “blitz” communities that are behind in pick up routes.
Plus, staff has also been working at night to retrofit GFL’s old trucks with camera systems and other technology Priority uses, according to Allen. This could only be done after the trucks were repaired, he said.
To Oxford residents, Allen said “we’re here, we still care, we understand. Thank you for taking this journey with us,”and believes Priority will deliver superior service and technology to its communities.