Athens Environmental Services

Sun Valley, CA

 

Here are a few pictures of Athens Environmental from last month. They're quickly repainting and rebranding the entire fleet to Athens colors.

 

I did some research into the company and the main information came from Beverly Hills' website. Once Recology bought out Crown, they were unable to maintain the same diversion rate that Crown had (even though they kept all the same operations...). Unsatisfied with their performance, BH went out to bid (after fining Recology multiple times), but only came back with one proposal, which was from Athens. This proposal was significantly higher than what Recology charged, so I believe the council extended the contract on a month-to-month basis instead as they didn't want to give Athens a new multi-year contract. About a month after this, in April 2017, Recology informed the city council that they were selling their assets to Araco Enterprises, not Arakelian Enterprises (the company that owns Athens). This in turn became the new Athens Environmental Services.

 

Since Athens didn't get Beverly Hills through the RFP process, that meant the only way they could get the city was through buying out Recology's assets. By acquiring their assets, this ensured BH that the same price Recology charged was kept. According to a union foreman, the reason for Athens creating AES was to separate the union employees Recology had and non-union employees at Athens, as Athens is extremely anti-union. A lot of the old Recology drivers told me that their former coworkers were only working like 3 days a week because they didn't have enough work, but not sure if that's changed these days. And unfortunately, I was told a lot of the older guys were being forced out since they had a lot of seniority & union benefits.

 

Anyway, sucks to see the old Crown colors almost gone at this point. But the Amrep ASL does look pretty cool with the new logo.

Done