Unless you treat and dispose of your company’s waste onsite, you’ll need to hire a transporter (AKA hauler or carrier) to haul your waste to treatment and disposal facilities. You as the shipper are ultimately responsible for your waste. So it’s in your very best interest to hire a reliable, responsible transporter for your waste. What that actually means – “reliable and responsible transporter” – has several components. In this new series, The Logistics of Transporting Waste: What You Need to Know to Protect Yourself, we’ll take a look at some of them to help you determine which hauler to choose.
When you’re selecting a carrier, here’s one of the first factors to consider: does the carrier hold the right permits to haul my material? Federal, state, and local governments have various permitting requirements. For example, there are federal requirements for hazardous waste and state requirements for non-hazardous waste hauling. State requirements can vary. In Georgia, you must be a registered Commercial Transporter to haul grease trap, grit trap, sand trap, and oil/water separator waste. And at a municipal level, Miami-Dade County, Florida, regulates the transportation of various types of liquid and solid waste, including hazardous waste, waste oil and oily waste waters, septic and grease trap waste, biomedical waste, spent radiator fluid, photo chemical waste, dry sewage sludge, and other types of non-hazardous industrial waste. What’s more, there are different interstate and intrastate requirements as well. You need to make certain that your carrier is fully permitted to transport your particular waste materials.
Secondly, are the carrier’s drivers legally eligible to operate their trucks and tankers? At a minimum, drivers must hold a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) that provides proof of passing advanced skills, knowledge, and experience testing. Moreover, drivers may also be required to hold special endorsements if, for example, they’ll be managing a truck with a tank, a double or triple trailer, or hazardous materials. Each endorsement requires additional written and/or driving tests.
These are two primary determinations to make when selecting a transporter for your waste. In the next few articles in this series, we’ll talk through other critical factors, such as truck and tanker maintenance, driver logs, and required documentation. Remember, if there are any issues in your waste’s transport, those issues will be your problem – in the form of fines, production delays, and possibly even a shut-down.
Environmental Remedies takes waste transport seriously. We scrupulously maintain our permits, and we also require our drivers to hold a hazardous materials endorsement even though we don’t routinely treat or dispose of such materials. Our rigorous practices protect not only ourselves but our customers as well.
To find out more about our waste transportation services, contact one of our representatives at 800-399-2783 or visit our website, envremedies.com. At Environmental Remedies, all solutions lead to clean.