Talk:Browning-Ferris Industries

Bias

This is very biased. --Jnelson09 14:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Very, very biased; but true. I worked there until the sale to Allied Waste, so I am unfit to fix it. Delfeye 13:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a history of BFI and/or Waste Management

i want to understand how the industry developed. were "mom and pop" trash firms assigned areas by the city governments or did they compete with each other or both? how did BFI "capture" the market? would love to correspond with someone who knows.

i have never done this before so i am not sure how to sign my post - just copied the above - will a responder be able to get in touch with me?  can you reply to my email account  

209.76.121.103 22:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If you are a registered user, you can identify yourself by including four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment. Then, people can communicate with you on your talk page. Anomalocaris 02:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a true history of BFI.JamesTKirksgirl 20:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

There is a book, unfortunately I am unsure of the title, about how BFI started and grew. I am a current employee at a landfill in California and the BFI brand is still used with some of the companies acquired by Allied Waste, due to permitting and so on. BFI, or Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc., is considered a wholly-owned subsidiary of Allied Waste, which was purchased by Republic Services last year.

One thing I do know is that how the "Mom and Pop" firms operated depended on the local governments. The most common system seems to have been that the local government (city or county) would franchise the residential collection, but commercial business was completely open to competition. Small firms, depending on the geographical area of the local government, sometimes would split the area for residential collection. This was to keep residents from being confused by have multiple collection companies coming through the same neighbourhood.

Some cities have continued to operate their own waste collection, including the commercial part (e.g., South San Francisco, California, which operates all collections and a transfer station for the Cities of South San Francisco and Millbrae.) ````kenbowles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.13.216.2 (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Against organised crime

Browning-Ferris had a role in cutting the participation of organized crime in New York City's commercial trash hauling, and this was written up in a major story in either Fortune or Forbes back in the company's heyday. The company's practice had been to enter a local market by buying a local company, but a N.Y.C. District Attorney warned that if a criminal case was made against a company that was since acquired by this company, the prosecution would be against the parent company, even though the parent didn't become the parent until later. So the company devised a strategy, which included, besides hiring several retired FBI agents and bringing in out-of-town sales representatives, suing customers who had signed contracts but then cancelled. After suing them, the company deposed the customers and forwarded depositions to the D.A., which built criminal cases for intimidation and other tactics by local companies against customers of Browning-Ferris and maybe intimidation against Browning-Ferris itself. There is also newspaper reporting that local private trash haulers treated their business as monopolies by entitlement, making it essentially impossible for a business, even a very big one, to switch companies, before reform took hold. BFI selling contracts doubtless disrupted that. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)