New Jendro Sanitation owner talks about purchase, future

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The new owner of Jendro Sanitation said customers in the area may notice some new trucks and workers with more personal protective equipment, but otherwise there will be few changes in services or employees anytime soon.

Steve Metz, the CEO of LJP Waste Solutions of Mankato, Minnesota, said he has known Alan Powell, the former co-owner of Jendro with his wife, Linda, for many years and knew that he was getting ready to retire.

“He saw us as a company that can do some of the things with Jendro that he just wasn’t prepared to invest in, whether it be trucks or infrastructure in the office or things for the drivers,” Metz said. “He was just at a point in his career that he didn’t want to put a lot of money into the company and he knew that we would be able to do that and want to be able to do that.”

Metz called the sale “a pretty natural progression in the industry,” noting that LJP had also recently purchased The Trash Man, a commercial and residential waste services business based in Webster City.

“That owner had passed away and we bought the company from the estate, but I had already been working with him and had an offer in front of him,” Metz said.

“A lot of these local haulers don’t want to sell to the big national players,” he said.

“I’m from Clarksville originally, and grew up coming up to Charles City all the time, and because I’ve been in the business I knew Alan and had a long-term relationship with him and it worked out real well for us to be able to do this.”

Metz said the area would be getting some new trucks as soon as they are available, but like other vehicles, the supply lines are backed up right now.

He said there would be no changes in the 23 employees who worked for Jendro.

“We met with the employees on day one, with Alan and Linda (Powell), and spent some time down there with them. We have no plans of changing personnel or anything like that. No plans right now of making any service changes,” Metz said.

“We may look for opportunities to enhance people’s service. For example, we’re adding carts for recycling over in New Hampton almost immediately. We’re going to deliver those in September so they’ll have wheeled carts similar to what Charles City has,” he said.

“We’ll make some changes like that that are agreed on by the city or any individual commercial accounts. Otherwise it’s going to continue Jendro Sanitation. Alan’s going to be there through a transition period probably deep into next year. All the employees are there.”

Some changes that will impact employees more than customers include upgrading the computer system to handle billing and payroll, and providing additional safety equipment.

“We handed out some additional personal protective equipment on day one,” Metz said. “Safety is our No. 1 priority, followed closely by customer service, followed closely by employee engagement. Those are the three things that we are going to focus on in the short term.”

He said LJP is currently in a “seek-to-understand mode.”

“We want to understand what all’s going on, not have any preconceived notions. Then we’ll talk to employees and talk to customers and if there’s a way to improve service or make it safer we’ll look into doing those things,” he said.

“I’m not down there day to day. I’ve got an operations guy that has been down there every week for a few days. We had a maintenance supervisor down there last week for a couple of days. My CFO has been down there for a couple days, just making sure that the team is stable and that they understand what’s going on,” Metz said.

That includes talking with employees about their ideas.

“We’re talking through some opportunities for what they’re telling us they’d like to see changed now that they’ve got some new ownership that’s willing to put a little more money in the business. That’s how we came up with the billing system and the payroll system and a few maintenance things,” Metz said.

Jendro has been in business for almost 40 years, providing municipal, residential and commercial service in Floyd, Mitchell and Chickasaw counties and the northern half of Butler County.