Trash days, happy days

This garbage guy tried to retire from the business, but it didn't take.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
Published August 27, 2007

Angelo Verrelli, 59, drives around Dade city picking up recycling bags. Angelo says he hates being in the office so he drives a few trash and recycling routes every week even though he has other people that could drive the routes for him.
	[David Degner | Times]

Angelo Verrelli left home at age 17.

He had uncles who lived in America. His father had visited. "So I said, hey, let's go try it."

That was in 1965. He moved from his tiny village outside Rome to Queens, N.Y., and found construction work. Learning English was hard at first because the other workers spoke only Italian, like him.

Within a year, he met a girl named Dominica who went by Mimi and was from Italy, too, and he married her. Soon, they had a daughter, and eventually three more.

Angelo drove cement trucks, Mimi worked in a grocery store, and somehow they saved money.

In a few years they left the city and bought a mountain resort in the Catskills that kept them busy, but only in the summer.

"I said that's what I should do - I should come to Florida because it's busy in the winter."

He planned to spend half the year working in each place, but the Sunshine State was too good to him. In 1979, he started a garbage company, CCI Disposal, and moved his family here. In 10 years it grew from 1,500 customers to 45,000.

So he sold.

But it didn't take.

"I was lost. I was like 40 years old when I retired. I had to do something, so I went back in. That's the best thing I knew how to do.

"My wife said, why don't you go back in the trash business? You're good at it."

So he did.

That was in 1996. Now, at age 59, he leaves his house in Ridge Manor and gets to work in Trilacoochee by 3 a.m. every weekday. He wears navy blue work pants and a polo shirt bearing the logo of his new company, Central Carting Disposal.

He drives trucks. Still. Again.

"You see people all the time, always talk to people. It keeps you occupied. When your mind is occupied all the time, you stay young - I wish."

"I like to do this, I really do. Driving trucks, I love it."

Central Carting has 32 employees, 18 trucks and more than 26,000 customers in Pasco and Hernando counties. Fuel and staffing and insurance are a constant squeeze. Pasco County just let him raise his rates by $2 a month, but he still doesn't make any profit on residential customers. The money's in the commercial accounts.

Lately, Angelo has been battling a sticky misconception with people who keep asking him why he's trying to build a dump.

But that's somebody else who wants to put a 90-acre landfill off U.S. 98 outside Dade City. The company is Angelo's Aggregate Materials.

"That name is not popular. I want people to know I have nothing to do with it," this Angelo says.

While he drives, a young guy in an orange vest rides on the back of the truck, hopping off every few feet to toss plastic sacks in the back. Pretty soon, the guy is sweating and donning a straw hat.

"I wish I could do that. I used to be a very thin guy - 145 pounds, one time. Those days, they're gone."

These days, his children are grown and they've given him four grandchildren. He hasn't been back to Italy in almost 20 years, though his voice still bears traces of the old country.

He keeps telling his wife he'll retire soon, but she knows better.

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[Last modified August 26, 2007, 21:43:13]