The National Waste and Recycling Association named Republic Services employee Chuck Thorpe driver of the year, recognizing his 20 years of no accidents or injuries on the job. His route takes him through Telford, Lower Salford, New Britain and Horsham.
It’s the kind of news that can mentally and emotionally devastate a parent.
Chuck Thorpe had just been told by doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that his 8-year-old son, Dylan, was not responding well to chemotherapy for his leukemia. The idea that he could lose his child filled Thorpe with dread, but there was nothing he could do but go to work at Republic Services in Telford.
A worried parent is probably not the best person to sit behind the wheel of a multi-ton trash collection truck, but Thorpe saw it as a chance to get his mind focused on something else.
“I get to work and I’m bawling,” Thorpe said Monday morning. “Once I got in the truck, everything went away and I thought about the job. It was kind of therapeutic, in a way. I’m in communities where children could be running behind the truck or trying to get me to honk the horn. I had to concentrate and watch out for other people’s children.”
The doctors figured out that Dylan had been given a double dose of chemo, Thorpe said, and reversed the bleak outlook. The leukemia has since gone into remission for more than a year. Nothing beats the news of a healthy child, but a close second came earlier this year when Thorpe was named driver of the year by the National Waste & Recycling Association.
“It’s in the large residential truck category,” Thorpe said. “It’s a once in a lifetime award, and about 400,000 people can be in this one category to win it.”
Thorpe earned the recognition based mostly on his pristine record of 20 years without an accident or injury while driving a heavy, unyielding trash truck on narrow residential roads, sometimes in rainy or snowy weather. Thorpe, who lives in Blue Bell with his wife and six children, has driven for Republic Services for 24 years and has become a leader at the Telford branch of the national company.
“He’s a comedian in the office,” said David Gromlich, general manager of the Telford office. “He’s got a big, gregarious personality, but once he gets behind the wheel, a switch goes off. It’s like a doctor going into surgery; he’s laser focused on what he’s doing.”
Thorpe’s current route takes him to New Britain on Monday and Thursday, Horsham on Tuesday and Friday and a scattered Wednesday in the Lower Salford and Telford areas. Thorpe averages about 3,200 homes a week, driving more than 600 miles and hauling between 60 to 80 tons that gets dumped at the company’s landfill in Reading.
Gromlich recalled riding along with Thorpe a couple weeks ago. Driving down one of the streets on his route, Gromlich could see Thorpe was keeping an eye on something up the road, but couldn’t figure out what caught his attention.
“I asked him what he was looking at,” Gromlich said. “Chuck said there was a car idling in the driveway outside one of the houses, he could see the exhaust coming out of the tailpipe. He wanted to keep an eye on that because a mom could come out with kids, and one of the kids could run out to the street. He’s already aware of the car four houses down while trying to operate the truck.”
That reliability and dedication earned Thorpe a spot on Republic Services’ Blue Crew, a select team of drivers who respond to work shortages or natural disasters around the country and provide emergency waste removal services. He spent three weeks in Texas last August, working 12-hour shifts cleaning up in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
“I went around with two local guys and picked up all the trash we could to get it off the streets,” Thorpe said. “If that stuff sits, they could get rats, mice, mosquitoes. It becomes a health hazard. It was pretty surreal being out there. People had their entire homes on the curb, waiting to be picked up. They were so grateful to see the garbage slowly disappear.”
To read the full story, visit http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/20180518/bucks-montco-hauler-named-trash-truck-driver-of-year/1.