The City of Chicago each day knowingly sends out dozens of giant trucks so overloaded with garbage that they violate state weight limits and tear up city streets and state highways.
And the same city agency that loads these privately owned rigs with too much garbage–the Department of Streets and Sanitation–also fixes the city streets they are damaging.
In fact, the trucks have been running overweight with the knowledge and approval of Streets and Sanitation workers, including the loaders who load the trucks and the weighmasters who weigh them, city documents show. The illegal weights are recorded in city records, and officials calculate trucker fees based on those weights.
Told of the overweight garbage rigs Thursday, state officials the next day dispatched a dozen state troopers with portable scales to the dump where the trucks unload. Within minutes, the troopers had ticketed two trucks overweighted with city trash.
Truck overweights have long been a source of controversy in Illinois, which has heavy truck traffic because of its industrial economy. The legislature, mindful of the highway deterioration caused by overweights, resisted the federal government`s efforts to increase the state`s weight limit until they were forced to do so in 1983.
One truck loaded at the 80,000-pound limit does the same damage to highways as 9,600 cars would do, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. Fixing the damage done by overweight trucks costs between $30 million and $50 million of taxpayer money each year, they estimated.
In addition, state police, who are assigned to stop overweight trucks, said they are major safety hazards because they are tougher to steer and harder to brake in emergencies.
The large number of overweight trucks that run out of the city`s waste transfer station without getting caught by state police is the strongest indication yet of the prevalance of overloaded trucks on the state`s highways. Over the last four months, 74 percent of the truckloads hauled from a Bridgeport transfer station to dumps have operated over the 80,000-pound limit set by the state, city records show. Some trucks weighed in at more than 100,000 pounds.
Specifically, from April through July, the Fred B. Barbara Trucking Co. Inc., a politically connected Chicago hauler, picked up 3,766 loads of garbage from the Southwest Transfer Station in Bridgeport. Of that, 2,780 were overweight, city records show.
A transfer station is a place where garbage is stored temporarily after it gets picked up in neighborhoods by smaller, city-owned garbage trucks. The Southwest Transfer Station is located at 1400 W. Pershing Rd.
Records for the city`s other two stations are kept differently than those at Southwest, making it impossible to determine the weights of trucks that haul trash from them. However, several truck drivers interviewed said they hauled overweight loads from these two stations, and that the practice has been going on for several years at all three.
Barbara Trucking began hauling trash from Southwest in April. For six years before that, Waste Management Inc. of Oak Brook, the world`s biggest trash hauler, held the contracts to haul there, as well as at the other two stations.
City records show that Waste Management frequently hauled overweight from Southwest, though not as often as Barbara Trucking has.
In November, for example, Waste Management ran 155 overweight loads, nearly 15 percent of its total. The heaviest was 99,940 pounds. The company did not get a single overweight ticket that month, state records show.
There were only 10 overweight loads at Southwest in December, and just 2 in January, Waste Management`s last month hauling from the station.
The city took over the job of hauling trash from Southwest in February and March, after a dispute with Waste Management that ended when the big company stoppped doing business directly with the city.
There were only two overweight loads–both were barely over the limit–in the two months Chicago hauled its own trash at Southwest, the records show.
John Halpin, commissioner of the Department of Streets and Sanitation, acknowledged that trucks may run overweight at all three transfer stations.
But he said it is hard for city loaders to tell when they have placed too much garbage on a truck. And it would be too costly for the city to unload the trucks if they are overweight, he said.
Besides, he said, the haulers want to carry as much garbage as possible.
”They have to do it that way or they`d make no money,” said Halpin, a former truck driver. ”We`d be cutting into their profits.”
Nonetheless, a department spokesman said that on Friday truckers were ordered to stop loading overweight at Southwest.
Donald Reddicliffe, a spokesman for Waste Management, said the company has tried to stay within the state limit, but has occasionally gone over it.
Barbara Trucking`s president, Fred Barbara, acknowledged that his trucks often haul overweight, but he blamed the city workers who overload them.
Barbara also claimed that he has paid between $10,000 and $11,000 in overweight fines in three months since he won the contract. The fine is $75 for each 500 pounds, plus court costs.
Barbara is the nephew of Ald. Fred Roti (1st) and has close ties to the 1st Ward Democratic organization, which in turn has long had close ties to the Department of Streets and Sanitation. Several of the organization`s precinct captains are employed by the agency at Southwest, for instance.
Barbara, who downplayed his political connections, said city loaders have refused to permit his drivers to go back to take off the extra weight. And he said it is not the weighmaster`s responsibility to enforce state weight laws. ”He`s not a policeman who tells you what you can`t carry,” Barbara said. ”That`s what the state police are out there for.”
Despite the assertions of Barbara and Halpin, city records suggest that it would not be hard for a loader to gauge whether a truck has too much trash. For example, the typical truck hauling garbage for the city weighs about 42,000 pounds empty. It`s legal load is 38,000 pounds. So a truck that is 20,000 pounds overweight is actually carrying more than 50 percent too much garbage.
Truckers who haul overweight can make extra money on their city contracts because they can make fewer trips, thus saving such overhead costs as driver salaries and fuel. They can also get away with having fewer trucks and drivers.
For example, on April 11 Barbara`s trucks hauled about 1.5 million pounds of city trash in 32 trips.
On every trip but one, his trucks were overweight, with the heaviest weighing in at 105,960 pounds. The trucks hauled a total of 291,000 pounds of illegal weights.
So in just one day, Barbara netted an extra $2,608 in hauling fees from the city, none of which he had to spend on extra drivers or extra trips.
The Tribune has previously reported that Linas Zeimys, one of the city workers responsible for loading trucks with city trash at Southwest, was given a lucrative contract by Waste Management to help the company haul the city`s trash. The newspaper also has reported that state trooper John Roggeveen was given a Waste Management trucking contract after he gave the company`s trucks many overweight tickets.
