United Waste Systems

"I started United Waste Systems with my own money, followed by outside capital from placements with friends and family about a year later. I ran the company privately until 1992, when our IPO launched with the two leading banks in the waste management sector at the time: Paine Webber and Alex Brown. The public capital markets were a whole new world to me, and it allowed me to go full throttle on acquisitions, beyond the initial deals we’d completed. The timing could not have been better. Environmental regulations were forcing municipal dumps to transform into state-of-the-art landfills, and the new bond requirements alone cost millions of dollars. A lot of small landfill owners were eager to sell out and let us shoulder the capital investments. There was also an opportunity to integrate vertically with trash collection companies strapped by rising disposal fees."

"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."