Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said he met with Priority Waste leadership, including their COO, this week. It comes after Hammoud said earlier this month the city would not pay the company until their service is reliable.
WATCH BELOW: Dearborn mayor says the city won't pay Priority Waste until service is reliable
"Our residents are getting extremely frustrated. Our call center cannot sustain the number of calls that are coming in each day about missed pick-ups," the mayor told 7 News Detroit on Aug. 1.
RELATED VIDEO: Defecated in, axles disabled, Priority Waste details issues with purchased GFL trucks
He also said on Aug. 1 that the city of Dearborn will now bill Priority Waste for the time city employees have spent helping with waste backlog.
In an update posted on Aug. 14, Hammoud said that Dearborn requires 17 trucks and daily drivers to complete the routes, and as of Aug. 14, they only had 15.
"Priority has drivers on standby, the biggest lag has been outfitting and fixing acquired vehicles - which they are expediting," Hammoud said.
He also said officials told him that they expect this week to be the final week without any major pick-up delays, and that by next Friday, all 17+ trucks in Dearborn will be updated and outfitted.
From Waterford to Rochester Hills to Dexter, we’ve heard your complaints about Priority Waste’s trash pickup issues ever since their takeover of GFL on July 1.
7 News Detroit has been digging into those concerns and has now learned, according to Priority Waste, that more than half of the trucks GFL gave to Priority were not in working order. Issues included human feces being left in the cabs of multiple trucks.
One former GFL employee also told 7 News Detroit that in the weeks leading up to the sale, trucks that needed maintenance were not being fixed.
“We thought we had a functioning fleet of 410 trucks, but what we ended up with was about half of that,” said Matt Allen, Priority Waste director of public relations and government affairs. “Truck after truck after truck started coming into our delivery yard by tow truck — that was a big red flag."
Allen says the trucks they received were "significantly" different than they had been when they inspected them two months prior. Hydraulic lines were missing or broken, brake systems were not working, fluid lines were missing, axles were disabled and some of the trucks had even been defecated in.
“Some of the more belligerent acts, like human feces in the cabs, that’s just rouge employees doing stupid things," Allen said. “We're not shying away from it; we just didn't want to publicize it for obvious reasons. We're not here to pick fights; we're here to fix problems... I can't speak to the why people did what they did at GFL. At this point, it doesn't matter. We’re getting it fixed.”
