11/21/2025
“The last load”
Owning a dumpster business wasn’t supposed to be emotional.
When I ordered my first 10 dumpsters in 2017, I thought it’s just steel, diesel, and debris right? Pick it up, haul it off, send an invoice, move on.
At least that’s what I used to think.
I learned otherwise the first time I pulled into a quiet driveway, the gravel drives always hit me harder, where an old man had passed away. The family stands in the yard, arms folded, eyes red. They nod toward the garage as if giving me silent permission.
I always back the dumpster down the drive, lower it gently, and step aside.
Within minutes, the loading begins.
A lifetime pours out of the house in cardboard boxes and armfuls of forgotten things: photo albums nobody had flipped through in decades, clothes still smelling of old cologne, a cracked recliner with its shape molded perfectly to the man who’d sat there every night for forty years. His fishing rods. His hunting mounts. His tools. The ceramic coffee stained mug with the chipped rim.
All of it tossed into my dumpster like it never mattered.
I try not to look too long, but I always do.
Every item hitting the metal sounds like a final goodbye.
This happens again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again…..
A widow’s sewing machine, heavy and worn.
A child’s drawings, faded from time.
Boxes of Christmas ornaments that once brought life and sparkle to a tree.
Wedding gifts, untouched for decades.
Books with the corners worn from being read by hands that no longer existed.
Cookbooks with handwritten recipes. 
Families always say things like,
“We don’t have room”
“Nobody wants it”
“It’s just old stuff”
But to me, it’s never just stuff. It’s the evidence that someone lived, loved, tried, built, kept, failed, hoped, and dreamed.
And now it’s all thrown away.
Ive started to notice my own habits changing.
Sometimes I walk through my house and shop, looking at the things I’ve collected. The shirts I never wear, the tools I think I need, the souvenirs from past vacations. I wonder what someone will think when they toss it all into the back of a dumpster someday, or will they even think about it at all?
I think about how many lives I’ve seen reduced to a few heavy of loads of “junk” dumped in the landfill.
Some days I feel the reality in my chest, as heavy as the loads of trash.
Everybody becomes a cleanup job eventually.
And most of what we leave behind doesn’t mean anything to anyone but us.
More often, after another quiet pickup, from an empty house with an empty driveway, I climb into my truck and sit there.
The dumpster behind me is full of the last pieces of someone’s world.
Sometimes I wish I could rescue it all— pull out the memories, the stories, and the laughter that once filled those rooms.
But all I can do is haul it away.
All that’s left to do is drive off to the landfill, carrying yet another life that no one else had room for.
Just last week I got a call from the son of a farmer in Rankin County, a family farm that I grew up dove hunting with my family and friends for years and years.
I heard of his dad’s recent passing, and was afraid of what he’d say next.
“The farm is for sale. We’ve got to get this place cleaned up. The house, the barn, and the shop are all full of dads things”
The farm isn’t for sale because the son wants to sell it. He grew up there, he still lives there, he loves that place. The farm is for sale because of a distant sibling disagreement and selling the family farm seems to be the only way to satisfy the courts.
When I returned down the driveway, a son stood beside a dumpster full of his dads personal belongings: some worthless treasures, some family heirlooms with nowhere else to go, but a lifetime of memories. After reminiscing dove hunts of years past and farm memories, it ended with a firm handshake and a goodbye.
Another one headed to the landfill to be covered and forgotten.
