Cape Coral buys its own garbage truck amid dispute with Waste Pro

A new garbage truck is about to hit the streets in Cape Coral. The city bought the truck after a series of problems with trash pickup and Waste Pro.

The new trash truck won’t be doing daily trash pickups, though, and the city says it will mostly be used for special events and emergency situations.

If you’ve got a pile of trash in your yard and it hasn’t been picked up for weeks, the city said this truck is one more layer to help haul your trash away.

“We want to make sure that we have an extra level of protection,” said Cape Coral Mayor John Gunter.

Extra protection against what the city says is Waste Pro’s inability to collect all of the trash.

Gunter helped take matters into the city’s own hands and bought the nearly $159,000 trash truck.

“That way if by chance we find ourselves again in a need like we have found ourselves in the past, that we have an option available,” said Gunter.

That means if you have a pile of trash in your front yard, and the pile is only getting bigger, the solution is just around the corner.

The city’s solid waste manager says your lawn won’t have to look like that for weeks on end.

“We do encourage our citizens if they’re having trash concerns, questions, they need something picked up, appliances, yard waste, anything like that, just call 311,” said Terry Schweitzer, the solid waste manager for the City of Cape Coral.

As of now, the city only has one trash truck to call its own, but WINK News asked the mayor if this could be the start of something more extensive like the city’s own fleet of trash trucks.

“Never say never, but it is something that I know we will look at and do some research on,” said Gunter.

The city is currently in litigation with Waste Pro, so they weren’t able to speak about any of the details of that situation.

They did say that the new trash truck should hit the road sometime next week.