Bill Genco

"Fast-forward to 1989 and the Bill Genco report mentioned in Chapter 2, on how the two leading companies in the waste management industry were raking in half a billion dollars of profit a year. I saw the familiar phrase “obscene profits” flash in my mind. I flew back to the U.S. and asked about 100 people who were making money in the waste industry what advice they had for me. A common theme that kept popping up was consolidation of landfills and waste collection companies in small, overlooked markets."

"United Waste Systems My next start-up was in the U.S. waste management industry. I remember vividly the moment the industry caught my attention in 1989. I was reading Merrill Lynch research reports in bed on a lazy Sunday morning in London, and came across a report written by Bill Genco, the top-ranked analyst for environmental services then. Bill had written that the two largest companies in the waste industry at the time, Waste Management and Browning-Ferris, were each making about half a billion dollars a year in profit, and I thought, How hard can it be to have trucks pick up trash, deposit it in a safe place, and send out an invoice? I wanted to know more. Waste management turned out to be a straightforward business with two big trends at the time. Landfill capacity was becoming precious, because government regulations were pushing small trash dumps out of business. Together with the second trend—integration of hauling and disposal—this created an opportunity for end-to-end consolidation. I liked those dynamics and started United Waste Systems in 1989. Then I looked for a way to capitalize on both trends and found it in tech-based truck routing."