by DONNA CURRIE
There’s no doubt about it, life – and business – in a small town is different. Anaconda Disposal is definitely a big part of its small town of about 8,000 people, surrounded by mountains in Montana.
The company is permitted to service all of Deer Lodge County, which is approximately a 30 mile radius including the home town of Anaconda. Because of the mountains, some of the roads can be tricky, which is why the company has three small garbage trucks that can handle those roads, along with three larger ones and two roll-off trucks.
Jeanne Krumm, one of the company’s owners, said that the company was founded in 1950 by her grandmother and step-grandfather. When the couple divorced in 1976, “grandmother got the garbage business,” Krumm said. Later, Krumm’s father bought the business, after having worked in the business since he was nine years old.
In 1990, Krumm’s husband, Tom, was working in the oil fields, and “wanted to get back to the small town,” so he started working for Krumm’s father. Krumm joined him in the garbage business in 2010, and then the couple purchased Anaconda in 2011, “so I’m the third generation,” she said.
There have been just a few changes in the business since the purchase. The company now has a website and they take credit cards for payment. “Dad was not trusting of credit cards,” Krumm said.
A fourth generation already has a foot in the door. Krumm’s son graduated from college in May and “couldn’t wait to get back home and be a garbage man.” He fills in when drivers are off or works on trucks when they’re on a particularly difficult route.
Not only does Anaconda pick up from residential customers, but they also handle commercial business in the county.
When the company was first founded, there were a few other garbage businesses in the area, but Anaconda Disposal is the only one left. However, individuals and businesses have the option of hauling their own materials to the local landfill.
One thing the small town doesn’t have is a recycling business. Krumm’s father had started a recycling business, but after two years of losing money, he handed it over to a nonprofit company. A few years ago, the recycling center closed for good. “They couldn’t make a go of it.”
One of the problems with the recycling business was that there simply was not enough material being collected to make it cost effective. Then, the material needed to be transported, typically to the west coast, which was expensive. “It’s a shame,” Krumm said. “We know we have to recycle, but who is going to foot the bill?”
Now that the recycling options are gone, there is more material going to the landfill, particularly cardboard. With the landfill located 20 miles from town, costs of trucking have increased.
Krumm doesn’t see a way for recycling to come back “unless the city becomes involved and can pay for the equipment to keep it going.”
That doesn’t mean that there’s no recycling at all. The local landfill won’t accept loads that contain metal, so they collect the metal near the entrance and take it to a recycler when there’s enough to transport. Also, Anaconda will pick up full roll-offs of metal from their customers and deliver it to a recycler in Butte.
With a virtual monopoly on waste hauling, Anaconda could get by with less than stellar service, but Krumm said that service is one of their priorities. It’s a small town after all, and “you know most of the customers.” They truly go beyond what’s necessary.
One day, Anaconda got a call from a customer in her 80s who accidentally threw her wallet away. Unfortunately, the load had just been dumped at the landfill, but that wasn’t the end of the story. “One of our guys was lucky enough to find it,” Krumm said, and the wallet was returned to its owner.
While most trash companies pull up to the curb to pick up trash, Anaconda employees go just a little further, and will go into back yards to retrieve trash bins for customers who can’t do it on their own.
A few years ago, Krumm noticed that local kids would stop by looking for work so they could afford their school supplies, so she started offering those supplies to kids who needed them. The company paid for those supplies at first, but when they posted about it on the company’s Facebook page, people started asking if they could help. Thanks to community donations, 276 backpacks full of school supplies were donated at the beginning of the school year.
That small town feel isn’t just about customers, it also applies to employees. Krumm said that their trucks are an older style that doesn’t have the automatic arm that empties containers into the trucks.
That costs more in labor, but “we don’t want to automate more because it would mean cutting jobs,” Krumm said. “It’s a small town.”
Published in the December 2018 Edition
