Doug’s Trash Removal to celebrate 40 years in business

Doug Brown has lived in Groton his entire life, and while not everyone may know him personally, almost everyone has heard of Doug’s Trash Removal. He has roughly 3,700 customers from Groton, Locke, Summerhill, Genoa and everywhere in between. 

The late Arthur and Esther Brown, who were Doug’s parents, raised him and his siblings, Tom, Linda, Troy, Lance and Elizabeth on Bakken Avenue. 

May marks 40 years since Doug started his business, and his journey tells an interesting story of a self-made man who attended Groton Central School but was not a high school completer. He left school and spent the first two years of his work life making snow and maintaining ski lifts at Song Mountain. 

In 1980, Doug met and married Paula Metcalf, and they welcomed their daughter, Christine (now Personius) in March 1981. Also in 1980, Doug began working nights at Brewer Titchener in Cortland, where he ran a drill press and drove a forklift for $5 per hour.  

“I still remember that I made $200 a week and brought home $152 back then,” Doug said. “I started hauling scrap on the side with my pickup truck because we needed extra income after Christine came along. I did that for a while, and then started hauling trash instead.” 

Thus, in May of 1983, Doug’s Trash Removal began, and by 1984 he had 95 customers, scattered around Groton, Lansing and Summerhill – all by word of mouth, and all served with just his pickup truck.  

“I made about 20 stops per haul,” Doug said. “There was a lot of trash then, with no recycling and no five-cent bottle returns, either. I got up at 8:00 in the morning, did my routes, went to work at Brewer’s at 3:30 and got home at midnight.” 

Doug explained that every town had its own landfill back then, and they were all free of charge to dump trash, so he could utilize whichever one was closest on his routes. This helped to streamline the travel, but it still began to take a toll on him.  

“By 1985, I had to make a choice,” Doug said. “I couldn’t keep doing both, so I quit Brewer’s and focused on my business.” 

In 1986, Doug hired his first employee, the late Dean Rowland, who drove a second pickup truck. The two were going strong five days a week until Doug purchased his first stake rack trucks in 1987. 

“You need two people on each of those trucks,” Doug explained, “one to drive and one to climb up and throw the trash in, so I hired two more employees. By then, the bottle deposits had started up again and recycling started shortly thereafter, so the loads weren’t quite as heavy as they had been.” 

Paula had taken a job at Cornell University in 1985 to help make ends meet, and it was there she learned about computers, encouraging Doug to invest in one so the business could move from handwritten ledgers to a computerized business management system, which he did.  

In the late ’80s, Doug added his first packer truck, which is the type of garbage truck we are all used to seeing today, for $6,000. Doug said that such trucks now cost $150,000 used or $300,000 new, but he never buys them new. He bought his second one in 1990 for $26,000.  

For the next five years, Doug was running three trucks and added more employees. He was still using his stake trucks and manned those with a cleanup crew that only cleaned out apartments, garages and basements until roll-off dumpsters came on the scene.  

“I bought a truck and four boxes to start,” Doug said, “and we’ve been building our own ever since. Mike Jones from Jones Welding on Smith Road came right to my shop and built them for me. I bought two brand new roll-offs in 2018 and 2019, and now we have 30 boxes – all but the original four [were] built by Mike.” 

With his current customer base, Doug has three trucks going out every day, five days a week. Dave Partlett, Zachary Cooper and Scott Metcalf are his drivers, and Joe Allen, Jayson Seamons and Danny Chambers are the throwers. Allen has worked for Doug for 23 years. 

Hiram Shaff is the mechanic. While the Doug’s Trash Removal office is located at 105 W. South St.  trucks and the mechanic shop are on Route 222, where they have been since 1992. Prior to that, Doug had an empty lot on Route 38 for that part of the business. 

Doug is in the office daily, along with Paula, who does the accounting, and Christine, who began working for her dad when she turned 17. 

“It’s been interesting and entertaining growing up in the business and around the crew of guys who have worked for us over the years,” Christine said. “It’s never a dull moment. This type of business is ever-changing. I was always happy and grateful to be in a family business so that I could always have my babies with me every day at the office and around my parents daily. It was challenging at times taking customer calls and running the office with a baby on my hip, but I would not have changed a thing, and now that my kids are older and in high school, they are learning more of the business.” 

“Christine is my right-hand person,” Doug said with pride. “I depend on her for a lot. She takes care of all the customer service duties, orders parts and then some.” 

Doug discussed the challenges of increasing costs and the necessity of raising prices for his customers.  

“Tires for trucks used to be about $175 in 2019. Today, they are $800 a tire,” Doug said. “I go through a set of back tires every three months on each truck, and a set of fronts once a year. A 55-gallon drum of oil was $250 in 2019, and now it’s $600.” 

Despite the challenges, Doug is grateful for his family and employees and the camaraderie they enjoy. 

“Whatever it takes, we are going to get the job done,” Doug said. “Everybody just pulls together and makes it happen. People ask me often lately when I’m going to retire, but we’re not going anywhere – we plan on being here a long time. As long as I can still do it, I will.” 

Groton on the Inside appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Submit story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com or text or call Linda at (607) 227-4922.  

In brief: 

Share the Love food drive 

Groton Food Providers needs your help to restock its shelves. The Share the Love food drive is a fun way to do that. Individuals or groups can prepare boxes of specific, needed items such as cereal, pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, canned tuna or other meat and more. What makes it fun? When you put a box together and decorate it, prizes will be awarded in various categories for the best decorated boxes. So, grab any size box you wish, get creative and decorate it and fill it with the above suggested items or any nonperishables. Label your box with “Share the Love,” put your name and contact information on a card inside the box and drop it off on Saturday, Feb. 18 between 10 and 11 a.m. at the Joyce Crouch Benevolence Building on the corner of S. Main Street and McKinley Avenue. If you are unable to deliver your box on this date and time, contact grotonfoodproviders18@gmail.com or phone Jean Wannall at (607) 382-4581. 

Good times at Groton American Legion 

Beat those winter blues with two great events happening at the Groton American Legion on Main Street – both are open to the public! On Friday, Feb. 10, beginning at 5 p.m., a chicken and biscuit dinner with mixed vegetables and dessert will be served for $10 per person, eat in or take out. They will deliver take-outs curbside if desired. On Saturday, Feb. 11, Lowell Smith and his group We’ll Be Jammin’ will perform at 2 p.m. The event will celebrate Valentine’s Day and February birthdays in style, and there is no charge.  

GPL Book Club 

The Groton Public Library Book Club will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16. The current book is New York Times bestseller “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. For more information, call (607) 898-5055 or email director@grotonpubliclibrary.org.