By Gail Wood
Back in 1971, when gas was only 33 cents a gallon, Richard Nixon was president and Olympia had a population of just 23,000, Tom Powell accepted a new job.
At age 22, Powell, four years after graduating from Tumwater High School, became a garbage man.
And 43 years later, after Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater had all more than doubled in size from when he first started working for LeMay Pacific Disposal, Powell retired in May.
“There’s no way I thought I’d stay this long,” Powell said. “But I really enjoyed it.”
In nearly five decades with the company, Powell rarely missed a day. He was someone management and customers could count on.
“Tom was one of those guys who was always here,” said Jeff Harwood, district manager of LeMay Pacific Disposal. “He took great pride in taking care of his customers. His customers were very important to him.”
The people on Powell’s garbage routes weren’t just customers. They were often friends. He knew them on a first-name basis.
“He’s just a wonderful person,” Harwood said. “It was almost like an impending death that he was leaving the team. We’ll miss him.”
When Powell first started working as a garbage man, Harwood figured Pacific Disposal had only about 12 drivers. Today, after the county population has more than quadrupled and after LeMay sold the family business to Waste Connections in the fall of 2008, there are about 75 drivers in this area.
Before he became a garbage man, Powell did some welding for a local construction company – Lee and Davis.
“Then this job came up and it was 75 cents more an hour,” Powell said. “So, I went here.”
With the hike in pay, Powell was making $3.75 an hour, about $150 a week – which was a pretty good wage back then. On Powell’s final day of work, he was earning $25 an hour.
In those early years, Powell had an incentive to get his job done quickly. He wanted to go fishing.
“We’d start around 7:00 am and we could be done very early,” Powell said. “Sometimes we could be fishing on the Toutle River by 11:30 am.”
Not only did Powell see the population of Olympia explode from 23,000 to today’s 48,000, he saw equipment changes. Trucks became fully automated. Drivers don’t have to get out of the truck and lift a garbage can into the truck anymore. Automatic clamps do the heavy lifting.
“I never thought a truck would ever pick up a can,” Powell said with a chuckle.
With that change in automation, there were fewer on the job injury claims. But Powell also noticed a lot of his buddies at work had to let out their belt buckles a couple of notches as the pounds started to add up.
“It seemed like everyone gained some weight,” Powell said.
For a long time, Powell worked in the commercial pickup, not in residential. He emptied the big blue bins at grocery stores instead of circling neighborhoods.
Throughout his career, Powell was always someone who could be counted on.
“He’s a fine person,” Harwood said. “I’ve been doing this for 42 years and I have the highest respect for him. I don’t remember him ever being involved in any accidents or any incidents.”
Every year, Powell scored well on his yearly reviews.
“He was probably right at the top in the company in their evaluations,” Harwood said. “He was just a model citizen. We nominated Tom several times for the national driver of the year. That’s how highly we thought of him.”
Powell always connected with his customers. Early in his career, he took pity on an elderly woman who didn’t have enough money to pay for the weekly pickup.
“I picked her garbage up for free for a couple of years,” Powell said. “I didn’t tell anybody about it. I just did it. She didn’t have the money. She couldn’t afford it.”
Powell, while a hard worker, isn’t a big talker. Harwood called him a quiet leader. But when he spoke, people listened. When LeMay sold the business six years ago, Harwood remembers Powell coming into his office after he had made some tough personnel decisions.
“He came in, closed the door and came over and shook my hand and said, ‘You made the right decision,’” Harwood said. “He was just that kind of guy.”
Now, as Powell begins a new chapter in his life, Harwood said he’ll be missed as a driver and as a friend. It was a good ride that lasted 43 years.
