I really don’t think it’s that dirty of a job. I grew up on a farm, and cleaning up cow stalls and milking cows is way dirtier than running garbage, in my opinion.”

Aftan Yutzy

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Cleanliness is next to godliness, they say, and you’re all about clean. Your home is neat and tidy, and so are the garbage bags you bring out to the street at the appointed time. You’ve sorted your plastics from your cardboard, kept the weight in each trash bag reasonable, and tied the bags closed with snug knots. You just expect one thing: the garbage service will pick it up.

When it doesn’t, you’re in a quandary. If you leave it outside, raccoons are going to tear the bags open looking for snacks. The wind is going to gust, scattering evidence of your potato chip addiction down the street. And your neighbor is going to pick those Amazon boxes out of their bushes and wonder why you aren’t shopping local.

If you bring it back inside the garage, it’s going to take up space, and all those moldy strawberries you had to toss are going to stop smelling sweet.

In this situation, Juston and Aftan Yutzy just might be your heroes. When your city calls N&N Sanitation to solve a problem, their crew is going to show up and take out the trash. But they don’t see themselves as heroic.

“I just married into this,” Aftan says.

“I was born into it,” Juston says.

The Yutzys are the third generation to own the refuse company, which was originally founded in 1970 as Yutzy Hauling Service by Juston’s grandpa, Roman Yutzy, and then renamed N&N Sanitation by his dad, Nicholas Yutzy. Juston and Aftan took over the business in 2018 after Nick’s passing.

It’s been a wild eight years, especially this last one. With competing businesses stumbling, N&N has won contracts with cities like Wellman, Hills, and Lone Tree; gained the favor of HOAs; and has become the top choice for those in need of a dumpster.

“Luckily, when we got most of the city contracts last year, we had already expanded by adding an additional truck and an additional driver, so we had quite a bit of capacity there,” Aftan says of the growth surge. “By the end of last year, we added two more positions: one for roll-off in terms of the construction and cleanout dumpsters, and then we added another side load driver, those automated carts, just because our routes were getting so big, it was just too much for one day.”

Business is reliable, the Yutzys say, with the only real turnover in customers occurring due to relocation or death.

“It stays pretty consistent as long as you’re doing what you said you would do, which is just pick up their trash,” Aftan says.

If you do the math on growth plus consistency, it comes out like this: “Since we took over from his dad, we’ve probably at least doubled in size in terms of customer base,” Aftan says.

Let’s look at some numbers. N&N has a crew of 10-12 guys who start their days at 6 a.m. Those with rural routes visit 150 to 250 houses a day, each of which has two carts to empty – trash and recyclable. They travel about the same number of miles as houses – 150 to 250, but a couple routes are closer to 300 miles. Those with residential city routes visit 400 to 600 houses a day, and their milage isn’t as high.

For the most part emptying bins is automated, so the drivers don’t touch a lot of trash.

“I really don’t think it’s that dirty of a job,” Aftan says. “I grew up on a farm, and cleaning up cow stalls and milking cows is way dirtier than running garbage, in my opinion.”

The trucks start the day empty, but by the end they’re filled with five to seven tons of trash; cities like Wellman and Lone Tree average six tons, for example. Depending on where the garbage was collected from, it’s deposited at the Iowa City Landfill, the SEMCO Landfill in Richland, or another local dump. Recyclables are packed into a truck, with cardboard delivered to Quincy Recycle in Cedar Rapids, and everything else to Scott Area Recycling Center in Davenport.

Drivers end their days about 4:30 or 5 p.m., back at home base in Kalona.

That’s a lot of work five days a week, and a lot of wear and tear on equipment. To keep collection going like clockwork, the Yutzys must stay prepared with backup trucks and drivers so customers don’t experience interruptions in service when the unforeseen happens.

You may be wondering what happens next in the life of your trash. If you’ve ever climbed Mount Trashmore in Cedar Rapids, you know that six million tons of junk can build a landmark with tourism potential.

At the landfill, “They spray a chemical on it that helps decompose it, and then they put dirt over top of it and compact it and just keep layering it,” Juston says. “Typically, around here, that’s the only way they do it.”

Recyclables take another route, one more expensive as it requires human labor and specialized machines. There’s a cool video you can find at wastecom.com/recycling/ that shows you how it happens in Davenport – the sorting and quality control, the conveyer belts and magnets, the compressing and baling. It helps you see waste in a whole new way.

As for Juston and Aftan, this is just business as usual. They’ve seen people leave entire boats and campers at landfills; landfills on fire; and even landfill closures so law enforcement can conduct searches for bodies, weapons, and evidence. But none of that is really a big deal for them.

“I feel like we just get so used to it at this point,” Aftan says.

Juston and Aftan find satisfaction in knowing they're doing their part to help customers and the community, and they're proud of what they’ve accomplished at the helm of N&N Sanitation.

But at the end of the day, they don’t see themselves as heroes.

“I’m just a garbage man,” Juston says.

N&N Sanitation

1010 Hwy 1, Kalona

319-656-4200

nandnsanitation.com